In Douglas, the areas that now need attention badly, are the areas of most pedestrian use.
The reliance on developers to provide all new civic street infrastructure just does not cut it and Douglas has slipped behind Cairns in the public presentation of its heavily trafficked precincts.
Whilst Cairns is not perfect, its waterfront esplanade presentation in both Palm Cove and more recently in the CBD is better than in Douglas and over 2008/12, this situation needs to be rectified.
Douglas has some $13 million in saleable land assets around the Links Golf course and at Rocky Point that should be sold and the sale funds directed at repairing and upgrading the civic presentation and infrastructure in Douglas.
For example, in Macrossan Street, we must immediately ensure there are sufficient centrally located public toilets. The one Exceloo, the ‘loo with a queue’ in Rotary Park is a starting point and more than one pan is needed.
The mish-mash of paving needs tidying up. The complete lack of public art must be rectified. The “missing tooth in the smile” where there are landscaping beds missing, needs planned planting. For example, the intersections of Grant and Macrossan Streets and Grant and Warner Streets need re-planting, as does Warner Street which is in general need of attention and repair. Black spot lighting, such as the problems over the pedestrian crossings and down Wharf Street, need lighting infill. Lighting is desperately needed in Warner Street and Warner Street still needs landscape planning and pavements repaired in front of the hire car/seafood/Blood Orange precinct. And hire car offices cannot continue to use street parking for a depot.
Long overdue storm water drainage issues being repaired at the beach end of Macrossan are just the tip of the iceberg for bigger drainage failures in Mudlo and Warner Streets and between Davidson and Garrick Streets, requiring 7 figure sums for its rectification, where work has begun, but which must be completed to prevent yet more flooding of low lying premises.

The widening of paving to promote al fresco dining from the Court House Hotel to at least Salsa and maybe past Zeus, must be undertaken soon, especially since this dinning area will need all the resilience of it can get, as potential competition looms somewhere in the Waterfront redevelopment. Being that there are strong offers from the Court House and Two Fish to help fund this work, plus the fact that paving extensions are also represent an income stream from annual table space hire, this work must proceed. The success of the paving in Grant or now “eat street” through the work of myself  and Melinda Cox together with the street traders is great to see operational and should be duplicated in Wharf Street’s fine dining strip. Both Douglas and Palm Cove have the best food and beverage teams north of Brisbane, so it’s the new Councils job to support and respect this trade and one starry night, a few years down the track, imagine walking through hundreds of candle lit dinners on Wharf Street and well, hold the vision, it will happen if the right leader is elected. I’m no gourmet chef, but I am a huge fan of the foodies of Douglas and Palm Cove, long may they cook up a storm.
Works to tidy up the Port Douglas Esplanade are incomplete and inadequate, the drainage that sees road gravel wash away, then deposit road fill on the most used entrances to the beach must be fixed, albeit it is acknowledged that EPA approval for these works is forever difficult.
A more determined effort to provide dune stabilization around the progressively eroded areas is witnessed in and around the Surf Lifesaver’s hut.
Because the waterfront revitalization incorporates and integrates the Esplanades and Macrossan/Warner Streets, it is important that this big investment proceed so as to get Port Douglas’s CBD back on the map as a ‘premier destination’. With Cairns’, ‘can-do’ approach, with Port’s $13 million in saleable assets and with large funding opportunities out of the Waterfront revitalization, these forces that are coming together may in fact make the amalgamation helpful to the much needed cries of Port Douglas for a makeover.
Mossman’s Front St also needs a makeover.
Whilst the recent under grounding of power and resealing works are all fine, Mossman, with its deep soils, great rainfall and intense growing rates must move to plan and plant street landscaping, to add shade and beautification to a main street badly lacking in terms of trees and green zones.
Acres of asphalt and concrete, even if brand new, do little to stop your car cooking in January and under the CRC, the landscaping planning urged for Mossman by myself and others, must get underway and a changing of the guard in Mossman politics should do a lot to improve Mossman’s CBD, from a 40m wide tarmac, to a green, shady hub. It was all I could do in 2007 to stop the DSC felling the few suffering figs it already had in Front Street. Whilst it is a Main Roads issue, the pioneer logic that has the Daintree to Cairns traffic dog-legged around train tracks, give ways and triangular parks, must one day be rationalized, to join the triangular island park to the footpath in front of the pub, so traffic can better flow through what is one of the north’s more classic road engineering entanglements, in front of Town and Country Hardware. The ‘by-pass’ that will feed cane trucks around the back of Mossman out of residential areas must be built. There’s work to be done in Division 10, the money is available to do it and its time it commenced in earnest.
The paralysis that was the result of the divisional representation of Douglas is gone, come March 2008. A new broom sweeps clean, and may I urge you to vote for a candidate that can articulate and negotiate the above seven figure work within the CRC and deliver for division 10.

CONTACT ROD DAVIS: vote@roddavis.org

MOBILE: 0418 235561 or HOME: 0740 994434

MAIL: PO BOX 714, Port Douglas, 4877.