Category: News

Given the wide-spread concerns about the development of Montague Road, the Draft City Plan and the lack of community engagement, Westender gave Aldi the opportunity to discuss in detail its engagement with community and plans for its site, now under construction. They have provided the following.

ALDI Australia is eager to bring the ALDI difference to West End and provide local residents with our Smarter Shopping offering: a convenient in-store experience with a clearly defined product range of the highest quality products at permanently low prices. When looking to open a new store in an area, ALDI works closely with local councils, community and residential groups and other businesses to ensure the presence of the store has a positive impact on the community.

A car park will also be built on site which will provide 74 spaces.

The new ALDI store will offer rewarding career opportunities to 20 residents, both in full and part-time positions, from the local community.

Westender publishes the following official council response to the tree disappearance at 108 Boundary St, West End

Environment, Parks and Sustainability Chairman Matthew Bourke said based on a request from one of the property owners, an arborist had assessed the tree earlier this year and recommended that it be removed.

“Urban trees provide benefits that are important to our city’s liveability and our subtropical landscape character, so their removal is not taken lightly,” Cr Bourke.

“However we must also respect the rights of adjacent property owners and that for every person concerned about the removal of a tree, there’s someone else worried it may fall on their property and cause serious damage.

“Council seeks to retain significant trees wherever possible, but in this case removal was the responsible course of action given its restricted location and the history of its neighbouring trees.

“The first of the neighbouring trees fell against the nearby building during a storm in November 2012, and the second tree was uprooted and landed on the road during the Australia Day storm event in 2013.”

After the WETA meeting held on 14th May, 2014 at which a representative from the Brisbane City Council was present, a communication was sent out advising that a consensus was reached regarding the Graffiti-Street Art in the West End area and it was being investigated to see where this could be introduced to West End.

We would like to advise that no decision was made on the night.  It was agreed that further discussions will be held with the Brisbane City Council to discuss this matter further before any decisions are made.

Helen Thompson, Secretary, West End Trader’s Association

Read Westender’s reporting of the discussion that was not a decision.

Despite the national treasurer’s discomfort with wind turbine’s many businesses are experiencing first-hand the bottom line advantages of thinking green.

As the Bendigo Bank writes on its Green Generation pages, “Business owners are recognizing that as the cost of energy, water and other limited resources rise, the value of best practice efficiency increases, thus speeding our transition to a sustainable society.”

Talking about the nation’s small to medium enterprises (SME’s) that make up 57% of the economy, the bank observes, “The way these 2 million+ businesses consume energy, water and other resources, is critical to our society’s ability to [transition to a sustainable economy]. The good news is, than in doing this, the owners and managers of these businesses will save money and increase their profits.]

The thought seems to be catching on. The SW Chamber of Commerce, now part of the CCIQ and missing its long term guide and mentor Roger Taufel, had an expert in LED lighting speaking last month and this month features Andrew Chamberlin, the CEO for Smart Energy at City Smart.

Speaking at the Brisbane Golf Club, Andrew will show how to give your business a competitive advantage by making real environmental and financial savings.

He will explain the ecoBiz program, through which businesses are able to reduce waste, water and power use, saving money, becoming more sustainable, and, importantly, boosting their bottom line. You will:

• learn some practical ways to save money and reduce costs in your business
• discover how to implement free and immediate changes to reduce costs in your business
• gain a better understanding of your bills and how to control electricity, water and waste
• understand how you can make the most of the CCIQ EcoBiz program and become an ecoBusiness

More than a dozen case studies of business saving money by thinking smarter are available at the EcoBiz website

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk is rolling out the accolades for Brisbane, clearly relishing being the Mayor of the hippest, fastest growing, smartest and most business friendly city on the face of the planet.

The praise comes from a variety of sources, with the latest label being added to Quirk’s Christmas Tree by the 2thinknow Innovation Cities Index which puts us at number 60 on their list of innovation hubs. 60 might seem like a long way from the top but Quirk quotes this as being in the top 15% and a leap of 25 places in one year, over the cities of Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Geneva, Edinburgh, Kuala Lumpur, Auckland, Wellington, Kobe, Shenzhen, Jakarta, Mumbai, Bangkok, Rome, Pittsburgh, Bristol, Madrid and Bonn.

The Hippest City in the Australia tag comes from Lonely Planet, which does not think Australia the hippest country in the world despite its down under roots. Similarly the Insight Index rating of Brisbane as the most business-friendly city in Australia is a local rating by a local agency.

Still the London Times Financial Magazine rates us as one of the ten top Asian cities of the future, though how far away that future is, and whether the residents of Shanghai, Manila and Hanoi consider us Asian remain unanswered questions.

Far be it for Westender to rain on Lord Mayor Quirk’s parade. We enjoy a good gong as much as the next goon and will line up with the mainstream media to eat hors d’oeuvres in our collective honour. Just a pity we have sworn off the booze, forever. I bet there is a nice sparkling chardonnay being flung about City Hall by the hospitality crew to celebrate the occasion.

Foreign investment is not taking over West End according to Rob Honeycombe, a director of the Real Estate Institute and BeesNees Real Estate.

Honeycombe is responding to recent reports that up to half of new housing stock was being snaffled up by foreign owners. He says that the fundamental reason this isolated statistic is not generally relevant is that foreigners cannot buy established or second-hand properties. Even with the spate of new apartments on the market, the statistics show that foreign investors currently hold less than one quarter of one percent of all residential housing stock in Australia.

In total at the end of 2013, the number of properties owned by foreign residents across Australia was around 72,000, with a little over 10% of them in Queensland. This has been steady for about three years. China, Canada and the USA each account for about ten percent of those foreign owners.

So, some new apartments coming onto the market will be sold to foreign and domestic investors and then rented to local renters. That will have little impact on the price of other types of housing but will keep some buoyancy in the apartment market which has flattened in cities like Sydney due to oversupply.

Honeycombe summarises the situation thus, “Many of these cultures have an ingrained love of bricks and mortar. Naturally as real estate agents we love them for that!”