TAKE your first look at new design art that imagines the Logan suburb of Meadowbrook as south-east Queensland’s newest city centre.
It has been released in time to welcome investors from all over Australia to Logan and help cement the future of the suburb, located just 30km north east of Jimboomba, as pedestrian and public transport friendly medical and specialist health and wellness hub.
Chair of Logan’s special city centre committee Cr Jon Raven said as a vision of what the not-too-distant future might hold for Meadowbrook, the best thing was its anchor in reality.
Cr Raven said the starting point was Loganlea Road, pictured just as it would look and lie according to a planned upgrade to six lanes with bus and turning lanes designed to improve traffic flow.
He said Logan Hospital had an imagined facelift – it is the pale grey building toward the back right of shot. The existing Meadowbrook hotel was re-imagined as a bigger better version of itself in two-tone brown to the back and left. Both stand where they stand in real life. “So those are your anchors in reality,” he said.
Cr Raven said it was no long shot to imagine a Logan hospital makeover. The State government had approved two upgrades back to back over five years, the first beginning in 2019 worth more than $280 million.
A strong business case had been made, he said, that it was time for a private hospital to set up in Logan as families arrive to populate the city’s burgeoning south-west. The imagined private hospital features as black box building positioned mid-left of shot – just where Logan planners hoped it would be built.
“The people of Logan shouldn’t have to travel outside of the city to get specialist medical care,” he said.
Cr Raven said the concept art put the viewer on Loganlea overpass looking north with an imaginery camera hovering just overhead and train tracks beneath. Loganlea Station moves 800m towards the hospital to bring it within walking distance to the hospital.
At street level, wide footpaths improve pedestrian flow and walkability. The pedestrian crossing, seen near Logan hospital, did not exist but had been positioned to deal with current jaywalking issues, he said.
“The best thing about this picture is all the green,” Cr Raven said.
“You might not end up with the trees you see here in the picture and they might not look like that when they’re planted but over time ...”
The Meadowbrook Summit launches tonight and continues tomorrow. Guests include Australian demographer and social commentator Bernard Salt.
Griffith University’s Logan campus based pro-vice chancellor Linda O’Brien will outline the university’s 20 year plan to transform the campus into a civic university.
Logan has one of the youngest populations in Australia, average age 34. Cr Raven, father of two, is 36.
Cr Raven said with Griffith Uni doing its thing on the education front it was the council’s job to focus on attracting investors to the health sector.
“And this, I suppose, is where I get a little bit cheeky,” he said.
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk delivered a recent State of the State address which imagined the future of hospitals.
She said opportunities for Queensland might lie in the disciplines of engineering and health care, factories that generated 3-D implants for surgeries and that future might lie in the medical devices industry in which the state already excelled.
If Queensland hoped to capitalise on that future, the state must support a medical centre of excellence for medical devices, she said.
Cr Raven said there was a case to make for that centre of excellence to be built in Logan and he would doing everything he could to make that case to those who could help.
“Every city including the Gold Coast has a health and knowledge precinct but as a point of difference for Meadowbrook, how good would that (a centre of excellence for medical devices) be?”
Cr Raven said Meadowbrook, with a train station, hospital, golf club and golf course already had most things it needed to attract doctors.
Across the train tracks, the suburb of Loganlea offered medium density residential use to six stories - the same height as the hospital which could provide apartment style living for doctors and nurses who worked nearby, Cr Raven said.
“I imagine them ducking down for an early round of golf then heading off to work,” he said.
“How good is that picture?
“You can really can imagine what Meadowbrook might be like.”