March 18, 2025
D-Day has arrived for the much-loved but dilapidated Tingoora Hall, with the South Burnett Regional Council opening tenders for its removal or demolition.
The fate of the hall – which opened in 1933 – has been the subject of local discussion for years.
South Burnett Regional Council wrote the unused building off its Asset Register more than a decade ago but postponed any decision on its future.
This was partly caused by the hall’s location – it was sited across two blocks of land, one owned by Council and the other by the Hall’s committee (all of whom were deceased) – and partly because of legal difficulties surrounding the original hall committee’s constitution.
The Council called two public meetings in 2022 and 2023 to discuss the Hall’s future with Tingoora residents before discussing how to proceed.
In January 2024 – at the last meeting of the last Council term – councillors discussed the five options available for the site:
- Mechanical demolition to remove the asbestos from the hall, demolish the structure and clean up the site (estimated cost $75,000)
- Manual demolition to remove the asbestos from the hall, demolish the structure and clean up the site manually, which would allow officers to repurpose and recycle some materials ($150,000)
- Total renovation to renovate the hall in-situ to modern building standards ($900,000)
- Relocation and renovation to relocate the hall to a new site nearby and then restump and renovate it ($920,000), or
- Demolish the supper room and renovate the remaining building to remove the asbestos from the hall and demolish the supper room and kitchenette sections, then rebuild the side wall and renovate the remainder – a move that would reduce the hall’s floor area by about 30 per cent ($850,000)
Councillors voted unanimously to support a motion proposed by Cr Kathy Duff and seconded by Cr Kirstie Schumacher that Council budget to demolish the hall in the 2024-25 financial year and salvage any viable construction materials for repurposing, then go back to the Tingoora community once tenders for a replacement facility had been received.
On Tuesday, the SBRC posted two Public Notices – one seeking submissions from contractors for the demolition of the building; the other seeking submissions for the sale and removal of the building. Both tenders close on Tuesday, April 8.
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