Sunshine Coast Bulletin - Australia

Village Roadshow who also own Gold Coast theme parks Wet’n’Wild and Movie World had announced plans for a theme park in August last year after entering a conditional agreement in May 2008 to acquire Aussie World and redevelop it. This also meant that Aussie World could not develop or sell the park to anyone during this period.

Village Roadshow released a statement saying that the potential returns do not justify the level of investment for the world class water park and have therefore decided not to exercise their option to acquire Aussie World.

Sunshine Coast Councillor Christian Dickson said the Sunshine Coast regional council was very much in support of the proposed water park.

“I have been given advice that the local Councillor, Cr. Anna Grosskreutz and the Councils Development Assessment Department, were behind the proposal and were leaning towards an approval for the project to begin construction,” he said.

Mr Dickson expressed that the State Government was the contributing factor to this project collapsing. He said that the main reason for the project not moving forward was the sheer requirements, such as the upgrades of local roads and access points to the Aussie World facility.

“It appears that the Bruce Highway would require $25 million worth of infrastructure upgrades to cope with the pressure of the proposed Wet'n'Wild theme Park,” Mr Dickson said.

“The State Government would not be in a position to fund these upgrades and in turn put the pressure back on the applicant, which caused them to pull out due to the sheer amount of capital outlay for road improvements,”

Mr Dickson added that the public response to the proposed theme parks had been positive and that the council and general public are very disappointed with the proposal not moving forward.

“I have received many emails and phone calls from residents who were deeply upset that the proposal was no longer going to go ahead,” he said.

Aussie World general manager David Thompson said water supply was another issue.

“The council couldn’t give an approximate time of when water to the park would be connected,” he said.

Mr Dickson said that the water connection would not have been an issue.

“I am not aware of the water supply issue and would assume that Council would allow the connection to town water if the applicant paid for the construction works associated with delivering the infrastructure,” he said.

Mr Thompson also denied speculation that Village Roadshow may not have wanted to lose the large number of people who travel from the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast each year to visit their attractions.

While the owner and staff of Aussie World are disappointed, the park will continue to develop.

“We will be spending $600,000 over the next few weeks on park upgrades, and will be looking to add new attractions over the next six months,” Mr Thompson said.

He added that despite the recent lack of development and the global financial crisis business is booming.

“Profits over the last two years have been the biggest we’ve experienced. Two weeks ago we had the second biggest weekend ever recorded,” he said.

Mr Dickson said that another proposed water park,  “Adventure Land” at Caloundra had pulled its application from Council and is selling the land due to conflict with the planning scheme.

“I have been advised that the applicant withdrew the application as the “Caloundra City Plan and the State Government’s South East Queensland Regional Plan did not allow for this form of development within the borders of both schemes,” he said.

Mr Dickson believes that tourism on the Sunshine Coast has lost an opportunity to secure another world class attraction, and therefore the Coast will continue to experience a hole in the theme park driven holiday market. The opportunities of such a facility would improve the overall drive market from Brisbane, which is one of the key ways the Sunshine Coast benefits from the tourism dollar.

“It’s a huge disappointment that not only holiday makers will be left without somewhere to visit on their trip, but existing residents will now have to continue to endure the long car trip to places such as the Gold Coast,” he said.

Mr Dickson said there are currently no applications before Council that directly relate to theme park based commercial businesses.

“I believe it will be a long time before we seriously see any developers come out of the woodwork to apply for such a venture,” he said.