FLAGSTONE and Logan Central have been selected as sites for new water play parks that will be built before the end of next year. Logan River Parklands, near Beenleigh, had been a contender, but missed out.
Suspended Logan mayor Luke Smith made a promise coming into the 2016 elections that water parks would be built at Jimboomba and Eagleby if he won.
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The Flagstone park will be part of a major kids playground.
The council proposes to build it as part of a joint venture with developer Peet.
The Logan Central park will be built at Logan Gardens.
Flagstone is a five minute drive from Jimboomba, with Logan River Parklands near Beenleigh and Eagleby.
Sites for the new parks were selected after an independent feasibilty study.
Parks chairwoman Jennie Breene said Logan River Parklands was among the sites assessed but did not score as highly under the selection criteria as Logan Gardens.
The study found the site would be more expensive to build and maintain than the chosen site.
Cr Breene said she was disappointed for residents in her division.
“I understand the community had high hopes for a water play area after the suspended mayor made a commitment in 2016 to the people of Division 12,” Cr Breene told Tuesday’s Logan City Council meeting.
“However due to the constraints of this site, to build a water play area at Logan River Parklands would have required allocating a huge part of the budget to civil works and site preparation.”
Acting deputy mayor Trevina Schwarz sympathised. “I feel for you,” she said.
Cr Russell Lutton said a water play park was much needed in Logan Central.
“It’s 20 years since we had to close the pool at Woodridge … people still talk to me about that,” he said.
John Freeman, a former Logan mayor who ran the city from 2000-2006 and was a mayoral candidate in the 2016 election campaign, was in the public gallery as an observer.
He said there was a lesson to be learned for those who ran in the mayoral race at the next council elections in March 2020.
“It’s all right to have ideas and make promises but not without making a business case and having it fully costed,” he said.
Mr Freeman said he had no doubt campaigning had already begun for the next election.
Asked whether he intended to run again in the race for mayor, he said: “That’s something to think about. Ask me again in January.”
Cr Smith faces charges of official perjury and corruption arising from the Crime and Corruption Commission’s Operation Belcarra. He has been suspended. He has vowed to fight the charges.
