The critically acclaimed Mystery Road: Origin returns as Detective Jay Swan (Mark Coles Smith) and Mary (Tuuli Narkle) uncover dark secrets in a haunted timber town, where the past threatens to tear them apart.<\/p>\n
The ratepayer association’s president, Lionel Morrell, described the potential handing over of a council-owned building worth millions of dollars as an “economically reckless deal”.<\/p>\n
“Why did they buy it? And why don’t they simply put it back on the market?” he said in an interview on ABC Mornings.<\/p>\n
Launceston Mayor Matthew Garwood declined to comment.<\/p>\n
According to a Tasmanian government property information report, the Birchalls building on Brisbane Street was bought by the council in March 2020 for $8.8 million.<\/p>\n
Four years earlier, the property had sold for $4.75 million.<\/p>\n
In May last year, it was reported council wrote down the property’s value to $7.1 million.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Tasmanian Ratepayers Association says it has learnt a proposal is being considered to effectively hand over the vacant site to a development consortium. (ABC News: Hayden Smith)<\/p>\n
Developer in talks to get site ‘for less than what council paid’<\/p>\n
The Launceston City Council selected Tas City Building as the “preferred partner developer” for the site in July, along with architects S. Group, but made no mention of transferring property ownership at the time.<\/p>\n
Tas City Building principal director Steven Simeoni\u00a0told the ABC he was looking at “getting the site for\u00a0less than what council paid\u00a0for it”.<\/p>\n
He did not provide details of the negotiations but said it “was not a large amount”.<\/p>\n
“It’s a tricky site,” he said.<\/p>\n
“[It’s a] bit of a white elephant that’s been there for a while.”<\/p>\n
He said the site had restrictions on it, mainly due to its heritage listing, which presented further challenges.<\/p>\n
Mr Simeoni said the consortium planned to fund a $15 million development of the site, which would likely include 21 apartments over four storeys, with commercial, retail and eateries below.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Launceston City Council selected Tas City Building as the “preferred partner developer” for the site in July (ABC News: Hayden Smith)<\/p>\n
He said he applauded council, “for their vision” in trying to make the most of the property.<\/p>\n
Mr Simeoni hoped a contract would be signed in the next month, and it would be redeveloped over 18 months from next March.<\/p>\n
“It’s great \u2026 the council is using a vision to get rid of a white elephant out of the Launceston CBD to make our CBD better,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Launceston Chamber of Commerce says it is seeking “clarity” from the council on the proposal. (ABC News: Hayden Smith)<\/p>\n
Birchalls building currently ‘substandard’, councillor says<\/p>\n
Minutes from the September 11 ordinary council meeting show that, in a closed session, councillors approved for chief executive Sam Johnson to sign the term sheet for the agreement.<\/p>\n
Mr Morrell said it “beggars belief” that the site would be effectively handed to the developers “for nothing”.<\/p>\n
However, the ABC understands there was widespread support among councillors to offload the building, which one councillor described as “substandard”.<\/p>\n
The Launceston Chamber of Commerce said it was seeking “clarity” from the council on the proposal.<\/p>\n
“Council for many years has promoted and failed to deliver any activity on the Birchalls site that would aid demand generation across the CBD precinct,” the chamber’s Gaile Lillico said.<\/p>\n
“When will we see actual confirmation of a development starting that benefits the community?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A ratepayers association says it is concerned a council-owned, multi-million-dollar Launceston CBD property is going to be given…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,108645,22674,99,2467,1022,16553,23273,13650,12152,108646,7134,8539],"class_list":["post-165158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-birchalls","tag-building","tag-business","tag-council","tag-developer","tag-development","tag-donate","tag-give","tag-launceston","tag-ratepayers","tag-sale","tag-tas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}