March 31, 2015
The surprise demolition of a building in Drayton Street, Nanango, has forced the South Burnett Regional Council to re-schedule its streetscaping plans.
Council held a public meeting in February with local traders to explain its plans for upgrading Drayton and Fitzroy streets, the final stage of a $1.2 million upgrade to the town’s CBD.
At the time, Council proposed to start work at the Drayton Street traffic lights in mid-March and steadily work up towards Gipps Street and along Fitzroy Street, completing the project by September.
But a few weeks later when the owners of the fruit shop removed a wall to undertake what they thought would be a routine maintenance job, they found a substantial part of the building’s frame had been eaten away by termites.
This forced them to demolish the building, and they are now constructing a new one in its place.
The former fruit shop is located not far from the traffic lights, and Council officers said the need to allow builders access to the site made doing their own work in lower Drayton Street impossible.
So instead, Council began working on improvements to Fitzroy Street’s three pedestrian crossings last week.
Work crews will continue to “work around” the fruit shop construction by altering the originally planned sequence of work.
South Burnett Mayor Wayne Kratzmann said on Tuesday the need to demolish the old building was not foreseen by the building’s owners and he had a lot of sympathy for their plight.
“They went into it probably expecting a small maintenance job, not a complete demolition and rebuild,” he said.
“But the building’s location means Council work crews can’t work in that part of Drayton Street until a new shop is built, so we’re revisiting our work schedule to see how we can accommodate the situation.”
The Mayor said he was determined the CBD upgrade would proceed on schedule, and he will be calling a second meeting of Nanango traders soon to advise them of Council’s new work sequence once it had been drawn up.
He said it was inevitable there would be some traffic disruptions during the course of the work.
“Nanango’s CBD is on a major highway and there’s no getting around that,” he said.
“But we’re looking at every possible way we can keep disruption for traders and shoppers to an absolute minimum.
“If that means having crews on site for longer hours than usual, then we’re prepared to look at that as an option.”
One small advantage of the change to plans is that Drayton Street’s central parking bays will stay in place for a little longer than had been originally planned.
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