Mister Brisbane: Echo beach
Sutton's is a pavilion without peer, but experience suggests it's doomed
I’m fatalistic when it comes to the preservation and restoration of heritage and historic buildings such as the Sutton’s Beach pavilion at Redcliffe, which has become the issue du jour in these parts.
Why? Because Queensland has always had a knock-it-down-build-something-shiny-and-new mentality.
I know that first-hand due to the efforts I made, with many others, to save the Regent theatre in the Brisbane CBD. It’s facade is still hanging in there, but its rear-end (where the actual theatre was) was demolished with indecent haste more than a decade ago. It’s still a big empty space, belying the argument that the development of a commercial tower was something of the utmost importance.
From what I’ve heard about the Sutton’s Beach situation, there are at least two echoes of the Regent battle.
The first came up in listener feedback to the Weekends show on 4BC, which I produce — and that’s the allegation that the council, in its various make-ups over many years, deliberately allowed the building to fall into disrepair so the argument could be made that it was unsalvageable.
The other is the claim from people associated with the council that the art-deco features of the pavilion are “not original” and therefore the building is not eligible for heritage protection.
With the Regent, the fact that the theatre space had already been transformed from one large auditorium into four cinemas allowed similar claims to be made.
I really hope that people pressure does prevail in this case, but I’m not optimistic.
The reality is that politicians — and councillors are politicians — don’t care because they are counting on you either to forget about it, or not think it important enough to sway your vote.
Make them believe otherwise!