Well, well, well

Tomorrow's frontpage of the Bully:

I could say "I told you so" but rather why not another prediction instead?:

The next major sporting flop in North Queensland will be the V8's

And as Rate Payer of West End posted in The Bully's comments at 3:36pm today:

"What happens to the TCC's $1M guarantee then????"

Yet another Townsville Blog

Following The Magpie's move to the blogosphere, Townsville now has another new blog on the scene.

Photoblogging $30 million at work in Townsville is an intermittent blog of pics taken of our dinosaur racing racing track built at taxpayers expense in Ried 'Park' on the other side of the Creek.

Posts will be completely adhoc and dependant on my going down Boundary St. and thinking to take a pic when I do.

Please feel free to submit your own pics - just email them to  islander505@gmail.com

Of Malls and Convention Centres

I finally had a wander down the 'finished' section of the Townsville Mall (or Flinders Street as it will soon be instantly recognised as around the globe).

Seeing no one is game to publicly bucket Council's latest little adventure in urban design (remember Flinders St East), let me be the first:

• It's gonna be a bloody wet place to go shopping in the wet season
• It's gonna be a bloody hot place to eat your lunch when it's not raining

On the plus side, some of Townsville's ugliest buildings are now fully exposed for the world's architecture tourists (and American boat people) to truly 'enjoy'.

More to the point, it seems that Council and the developer class about town have worked out that the renovation ain't going to work, ain't gonna make the Mall one bit more competitive as a shopping destination and ain't gonna be the $57 million incentive to potential investors in Lancini's Flinders Plaza development that it was designed to provide.

The building 'campaign' for Townsville's much mooted Convention Centre to be located within the CBD (read Lancini's Flinders Plaza ghetto)  is a great study in how these guys play the game (with the help of The Bulletin of course):

• You simply start by someone with profile raising the suggestion - as CBD Taskforce chairman Craig Stack no doubt did in a call to Tony Raggatt who pushes the idea into play.  The same day the Bully's anonymous Editor does a support piece in his editorial - not too strident, gently, gently, place it second.
• The next day you run a page-3 story (complete with front page header) in which, according to Raggatt, "the idea has been supported by Townsville Mayor Les Tyrell and CBD Taskforce chairman Craig Stack" (the previous day he had reported Stack and Tyrell as saying that the idea should be considered). 
• While we're about it, let's introduce Lancini into play - carefully though, you wouldn't like to look too eager at the prospect of a $140 million key-stone tenant to kick your stalled development along.
• And let's add a bit a bit of weight to the proposition by quoting an economist - and none other than local developer Carey Ramm
• And for good measure, why not give Raggatt a 'Business Desk' opinion piece on the same day when he can invoke the ghosts of his father to argue that Lancini should have the subsidy Convention Centre.

In one sense, of course, they are all right - the only thing that will make the Mall work is more people!  However, no one is going to open a shop in the Mall on the promise of maybe lots of people attending a 2 or 3- day conference once a month for maybe nine months of the year.

And of course adding a few carparks (even at the expense of the hundreds that come to the precinct every day by bus - how dumb is that) is not going to make the CBD any more attractive or convenient or, therefore, competitive against Stocklands, The Willows etc

I'm afraid that population density in the CBD (both residential and office) is the only thing that will save The Mall and Council had their chance when they considered a proposal for the development of an Arts Centre (that could have also accommodated conventions) and office/residential complex on what is currently the carpark between Council and the Law Courts.  Instead, they chose to use the available funds to build the tack-on to the Civic Theatre which (coincidentally, of course) gave Les and the big boys a perfectly oriented balcony from which they can gaze down on Pitt Straight during the annual Ried "Park" dinosaur race.  Perhaps Raggatt should chase down that story.

A convention centre to save Flinders Street is a dumb idea - just like putting a road down the middle will prove to be.  But now that they've started the play, I'm afraid that we're all gonna have to watch it unfold over the quite holiday period when no-one is paying any attention to politics. After all, it might just lead to an extra $140 million subsidy support to the failed Flinders Plaza ghetto -on top of what is fairly obviously the failed $57 million subsidy Mall 'upgrade'.

Oh, did I remember to mention that Lancini is a gold advertiser with the Bully and probably the occasional supplier of free drinks to Tony Raggatt?

Finally! A positive post about Dinosaur Racing

Regular readers will be well aware of my aversion to public investment in V8 racing in Townsville. But finally today, some related news that I applaud.

RACEGOERS driving to this year's V8 Supercars event face fines of $300 if they park illegally

At last we get a public return from our $30 million public investment - mind you, Council will need to write over 100,000 tickets to cover the full bill!

Dinosaur music for dinosaur racing

I see that Oz music legend Michael Hutchence's old backing band will be playing at the V8's Reid Park sales expo this year.

There is some sort of beautiful irony about a band that will be on its fifth lead singer (that I can recall at least) since Hutchence's death in ’97 and which had to stoop so low as reality TV to try and kick-start (poor pun, I know) its career again (unsuccessfully so) now playing to petrol-heads at an event for dinosaur vehicles that will be extinct in another 10-15 years (or at least unable to afford the petrol).

INXS haven’t done anything worth listening to in the last 13 years – a bit like dinosaur racing’s contribution to humanity over the same period.

Finally, it's an oldie but a goodie:
     Q: What's the difference between Michael Hutchence and Princess Diana?

     A: Michael Hutchence had his belt on when he died.

Finally! Townsville gets a uefull racing venue

Great news today that, having realised that the $30 million Reed Park race track has within a year turned into a white elephant, Townsville City Council has decided to invest in a race track that is likely to be used 365 days a year – much better value-for-money than the 5 days a year that Les’ memorial dinosaur racing venue used.

Could this be the mansion that the V8’s built?

As we predicted here, it seems that Tony Ireland has been the big beneficiary of the annual dinosaur race and the $30 million spent on what has become a 360-day a year white elephant"

Ireland Holden shifts through gears

The real economics of dinosaur racing

At last, someone has put the lie to all of the hype about the supposed economic benefits of public subsidies for mega sporting events like Townsville’s (for now) annual dinosaur racing extravaganza.

Chris Berg from the Institute of Public Affairs (not exactly my favourite think-tank) writing in nationaltimes.com, points out the shameful secret: the economic benefits of holding mega events are almost entirely fictitious.

It’s about time our local and State politicians fessed-up – public subsidies for dinosaur racing is simply about buying our love (and votes) – and with our own tax money.

Dinosaur racing goes international but will they continue to graze in Townsville

I see that the V8 Dinosaur Race is set to go international with events planned for Bahrain and Abu Dhabi next year. You can’t really blame them of course – like the Dinosaurs of old, they will always go where the money (i.e. food) is most plentiful.

But you have to wonder how long they will continue to graze in little old Townsville??

The death of Dinosaur Racing sooner rather than later?

It seems that our (taxpayer) investment in the Reid Park Dinosaur Racing circuit may be wasted earlier than I'd expected. 

See this story by Terry Macalister in the Age: Global oil supply 'far worse than admitted'

What future for the racing dinosaurs

You have to wonder what today's announcement in the Sunday Mail means for the viability of the dinosaur racing in Townsville. The announcement that there are plans to make the Gold Coast SuperGP part of $2m V8's Grand Slam should send shivers up the spines of all tax-payers.

If the plan goes ahead, you have to wonder whether interstate and regional Queensland punters are going to come to the Townsville warm-up race or spend their hard-earned on the main game at the Gold Coast. Tourist inflows were of course the singular justification for the taxpayer 'investment' in dinosaur racing in our little town.

What future for the Townsville V8's

Given the morphing of the Gold Coast Indy into the GG V8's you have to wonder what the future of the racing dinosaurs is in Townsville – can Queensland support two events?

And with today’s report in the Bully that The Cowboy’s numbers are down by 30% and recent reports of the difficulties that The NQ Fury are having in attracting anyone to their games or even keeping their sponsors, you have to wonder whether the town has reached the limits of its capacity to support professional sorting events.

Makes John Quiggin’s questioning of Government investments in such event’s even more pertinent.