It’s one year, almost to the day, since the Walker Group was told by the Federal Government that its massive apartment proposal at Toondah Harbour wouldn’t proceed until the company produced an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
The announcement was heralded by supporters as the “green light” for the construction of 3,600 apartments at Toondah. And it was. The EIS process nearly always delivers Canberra’s stamp of approval to contentious developments.
As if to celebrate the first anniversary of the ‘green light’, Don Brown, state Labor member for Capalaba and vocal champion of the Toondah proposal, told the Redland City Bulletin on Monday that the demand for tradies when construction starts at the harbour site will be so great that Walker Group should now partner with Alexandra Hills TAFE to look at workforce and training needs.
“Toondah promises a pipeline of local work that makes training purposeful and exciting for local kids,” Mr. Brown enthused. Local contractors should “start planning to meet Walker’s needs”. Tradies need information sessions so they can “start to gear up”.
The sense of urgency in the Bulletin’s story, of an unstoppable project forging ahead, lasted right up to the last sentence – then died in its tracks: “The project’s environmental impact study is expected to be under way within months.”
Walker Group hasn’t even started work on the EIS, apparently. The whole project stalled when the lights turned green 12 months ago, and hasn’t moved since. Why?
What if the answer is this: Walker Group will never build a single apartment at Toondah, nor turn even a shovelful of dirt. It’s a scenario that begs some interesting questions.
Is Lang Walker, the Sydney tycoon developer chosen for Toondah, still committed to the idea of building 3,600 apartments there? Just last month, Mr. Walker told the Sydney Morning Herald “Two years ago, I decided to get out of the apartment market because I could see it was beginning to get oversupplied in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane… ” Pardon? Two years ago!
So the grand plan to build thousands of apartments at Toondah is rocketing long, with just the slight hiccup that the sole developer has decided ‘to get out of the apartment market’! Walker adds, “I will go back into apartments one day, but not yet.” So when? Two years, and counting.
If Walker Group has gone cold on apartment building, how did that news go down inside the Redland City Council and the State Government’s Economic Development HQ?
If Lang Walker is not building apartments until some unknown time in the future, when do all the jobs at Toondah Harbour start? When do we get our new ferry terminal that’s meant to be the public’s benefit from the deal?
And if the apartment market continues to tank through the economic hard times so widely forecast, does Toondah Harbour just sit there undeveloped for… what.. a decade? two decades? until a Sydney billionaire figures its worth firing up the dredge?
Is Lang Walker, touted as the great hope of Redlands’ economic resurrection, willing and able to walk away from his agreement with Council and the State? Let’s take ‘willing’ first. Lang Walker is credited with knowing when to hold, and when to fold on development projects. On three occasions he has quit virtually all his assets, anticipating market upheavals like the dotcom crisis, and the GFC. After the chaos, cashed up, he’s bought back cannily into a rising market. He’s not just willing to jump clear of a dud prospect, it’s part of his formidable strategy.
Can Walker Group walk away from Toondah Harbour?
Is Walker Group able to quit Toondah, unscathed, if it wants to? Speaking after the Toondah Development Agreement between Walker Group and the Council was signed, Mayor Karen Williams sounded relieved. “Walkers needed the certainty provided by such agreements and without the agreements they may have walked away from the project”.
What odds the billionaire Walker drove exactly the deal he wanted with Councillor Williams – ensuring the ‘certainty’ of being able to exit the project early, and profitably, without building anything? It fits his philosophy. “Location obviously is the most important. You make your money when you buy the site…. I’ve seen a lot of people that, you know, they talk about making money out of the project. I think that’s probably the wrong approach.”
If Walker has no current interest in building apartments, and doesn’t think that’s the profitable bit of the exercise anyway, what next? Does he have the right to on-sell his stake in the Toondah agreement?
He’s been virtually gifted public waterfront land thanks to the Redlands Council and successive state governments. Why wouldn’t he just wait until the market’s primed, package Toondah up with all the necessary development approvals, and then on-sell it for a huge return on a very small investment?
Perhaps these questions, or rather the answers, are why Walker Group (and the State Labor Government) are still fighting in court to keep the Toondah Development Agreement secret. And why Toondah’s cheer squad are bravely smiling, tap-dancing and clutching at straws – which is where we came in. It’s doubtful Redland’s tradies will be gearing up for Toondah anytime soon.
Redlands2030 – 17 July 2019
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6 Comments
This is more like it. We need intelligent and relevant comment in order for R2030 to make a real difference to a process that has been one-sided and shrouded in secrecy until quite recently. Not even the councillors of Redland City Council (RCC) were aware of all the facts yet they voted unanimously (except for Cr Ogilvie and absentees) to support the Walker Proposal between 2013 and 2016. I attended one Wednesday morning Council Meeting in 2018 where a councillor made a particular enquiry about the Walker Agreement signed by Council. He was immediately informed by the Mayor that such information was not available due to “Commercial in Confidence.” The comments below by Dan, Natalie, Bryan and Doug are right on the money, and let’s face it, money is the operative factor for both the Developer and RCC. For anyone who doesn’t understand why the Wetlands of Moreton Bay are so important to the health of the marine ecosystem of the whole Bay allow me to say that those wetlands, including the mangrove areas, are the nursery grounds of hundreds of species of rays, fish, crabs, prawns and other invertebrates like polychaetes and molluscs. The invertebrates and small fish form the food source for 34 species of migratory birds. If those wetland regions are dredged for a commercial enterprise many of those endangered shore birds will simply die because they have lost up to 40% of their body weight by the time they reach Australia from as far away as Siberia and parts of China. Even the Chinese have now acknowledged the value of retaining their own wetlands in a healthy state and have declared it illegal to disturb these areas. To me it seems almost criminal that we have elected officials in our Council and in our State Government that have no understanding of these values yet they are making decisions that can cause irreversible environmental damage to Moreton Bay.
WELL SAID DAN!!
“Absolutely no one , and I mean NO ONE in the area wants this abomination. The area is beautiful and suits the needs of the local residents (I mean the people who actually live in the area). The only thing that is needed is an upgrade and expansion of parking facilities for the ferry terminal. To destroy wetlands and the beauty of the area to benefit ‘blow ins’. The most dysfunctional council in SEQ is a disgrace. Hang your heads in shame.”
I do not know 1 SINGLE LOCAL that wants this….. NOT ONE!!!!! It’s not just the Greenies that don’t. Council, you are doing a disgraceful job with all this development, you clearly have NO understanding of why people enjoy living in the Redlands. You should all be beyond shamed to even consider this. And what about the Easter Curlew? Absolutely disgusting.
Absolutely no one , and I mean NO ONE in the area wants this abomination. The area is beautiful and suits the needs of the local residents (I mean the people who actually live in the area). The only thing that is needed is an upgrade and expansion of parking facilities for the ferry terminal. To destroy wetlands and the beauty of the area to benefit ‘blow ins’. The most dysfunctional council in SEQ is a disgrace. Hang your heads in shame.
Having read the post and the comments it has generated, I was reminded of the Sydney Morning Herald news article of 7 July 2008 titled “With strings attached” by Royce Miller. The article reported that “…. Lang Walker is said to boast he can ‘buy and sell’ any government in Australia” (www.smh.com.au ). It would seem that due diligence by the Redland City Council and the State Government has been lacking.
I wonder if Don Brown, Labor Member for Capalaba, realises that his comments about “jobs”, a common catch cry of both major political parties, may have just shot Kim Richards in the foot. Labor will have a hard time winning the seat for the Redlands at the next state election and Deb Frecklington (P2 of this week’s Redland City Bulletin) says “the Redlands is one of 11 seats the party is in good stead to win over in the October 2020 election.” Don Brown may think he is supporting his deputy leader, Jackie Trad, but lets face it, she is a liability to her own Party. Not only has she turned a deaf ear to the growing outcry from the residents but she is also ignoring the Labor Party’s own environment policy. She did not even bat an eyelid when the wealthy developer, Lang Walker, increased the number of proposed units from 800 to 3,600. Neither Labor nor the Redland City Council have investigated the infrastructure that would be required or the irreversible environmental damage that would be caused. In the meantime Lang Walker is weighing up the negative aspects of supply and demand, building so many highly expensive units in such a small area over protected wetlands.
Your insightful examination of Mr Walker’s shrewd approach to wealth creation is backed up by his actions in other places.
The proposed Riverlea development at Buckland Park, given major project status by the South Australian government in 2007, was approved in 2014 and has yet to be started. In the following article, Mr Walker gives assurances that the work will begin in “early 2019” in negotiating an extension of his approval.
https://indaily.com.au/news/2018/12/04/another-delay-for-controversial-development-but-walker-promises-action/
Then in April 2019,(see the following article) his company is awarded a 3-year extension until October 2021, fourteen years after the project was first touted, for substantial works to begin.
https://indaily.com.au/news/2019/04/11/walkers-buckland-park-housing-development-given-three-year-extension/
It would also appear that there’s a focus on difficult sites. – Toondah, Hope Island, Riverlea and Senibong Cove in Malaysia to name a few. One imagines that sites like these can be acquired or held at minimal cost in development terms.
To find examples of the company walking away from developments one need only look as far as Weinam Creek, where it seems the requirement to take on both Toondah and Weinam Creek seems to have softened in the ripening. Was the City compensated for this inconvenient change? Did the clients have any contractual rights in this regard? We won’t know what the position is until the agreement is available for ratepayers to peruse.
Given the track record and the rumours about massive damages payable should the City and the State withdraw, one can’t help but feel that the Walker Corporation is adept at making profits above all else. It appears that Mr Walker plays the long game, waiting at his convenience for economic, market and political conditions to align.
Don’t hold your breath awaiting the first rates to trickle in from this development should it ever, God forbid, gain approval.