The completion of the $700 million mixed-use development, Southport Central, on the Gold Coast was a great achievement for project manager John Gowdie and his team.
Gowdie was appointed on the project halfway through construction after developer Raptis Group went into receivership in September 2008. The most challenging part for Gowdie while working on the development was keeping his sub-contracting team of 400 together.
“If you’re a sub-contractor and you witness a company go broke you are worried you won’t get paid,” Gowdie says. “The receivers and managers Mark Korda and John Park of KordaMentha had a very good strategy and were able to keep that workforce together and get the building finished.”
Southport Central comprises three towers – two reach 40-storeys and the third is 39 floors – and seven detached satellite commercial buildings, including 788 residential apartments, 34,255 sqm of commercial office space and 65 retail tenancies in an integrated street-level plaza.
Kevin Blair says the design brief was to create a contemporary ‘work, live and play’ environment. “Southport has been stagnating for quite a number of years now in terms of development as a centre – it was losing its focus so the client saw the opportunity to rejuvenate it.”
Blair says the design brief had many challenges. “It’s always difficult to come up with something that’s new and fresh in the market. The challenge was to produce something that is both economical to build and with a good architectural outcome.”
During the design process, Blair says there was a degree of frustration with the Gold Coast City Council while trying to achieve the client’s desired plot ratios in terms of the yield.
“The Gold Coast has been very pro- development over the last number of years and has been very forthcoming with plot ratio bonuses and additional yields to better the production of what they see as high standard urban design and architecture and creating that whole work, live and play philosophy in Southport,” Blair says. “It’s always fairly negotiable on the Gold Coast but it was just the backwards and forwards frustration that we felt where the pain was.”
There were several highs and lows with Southport Central’s 18,130 sqm site during construction, including downtime where experts from Sydney had to blast three or four basement levels of rock in tower three. Existing ground water was also discovered running through the site, which was collected with rainwater harvesting.
Southport Central, said to be the largest mixed-use development in the Southern Hemisphere, was visionary for the Gold Coast in its approach. “A lot of podiums and stone were used – it had a central energy plant on the top of the towers and a reverse osmosis unit, which is a way of treating water and reusing it,” Gowdie says.
Although there were no major changes to the design brief after the takeover, there were small changes that affected the outcome of the project. “There’s always an economic reality between what we draw, the dream of what we want to give to the client and what they can afford,” Blair says. “Because the process goes on for quite some time, you’ve got to sit back, which is difficult to separate yourself from.
With the advantage of hindsight, Blair says there were a number of things he would have done differently. For example, the use of primary colours – red, blue and yellow – was distributed on the podium levels by the client’s request, which was “overdone”.
“I think the architecture has a number of quite significant fractured and sculptured building forms that stand on their own rather than injecting too much colour into those forms. The biggest concern is obviously colours – because of the colours, it’s in vogue one day and the next day it’s out and it tends to date the product,” he says.
Despite the project falling into receivership and the subsequent changes in management, Southport Central was completed on schedule.
“People are very, very resilient in the face of horrible situations,” Gowdie says. “Treat them well and provide support and encouragement, make them realise that it’s not their fault, treat your people properly and they will do anything for you.”
Michelle Hutchison