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The key idea there is not so much about the linear journey; instead it's about creating important spatial opportunities.
From the Queen Street Mall, visitors will come into an international department store (currently the Treasury Casino) to rival the likes of Saks Fifth Avenue. They can then travel over or under Elizabeth Street into a huge premium retail complex likely to be named Queen’s Walk and lit by natural light from a park above.
From there, the public can walk through the Ritz Carlton Hotel and into Stephens Laneway, with restaurant offerings and a hanging garden.The laneway, which is not yet open to the public, will filter out into the Printery Courtyard, surrounded by heritage-listed buildings offering providore-style foods. From the courtyard, the first of the new towers will present itself, along with the George Street Plaza, which will provide entry to the casino, sky deck, cinema verde and hotels such as the Rosewood and Dorset.
The red ribbon then flows along the back of heritage-listed buildings The Mansions and Harris Terrace and in front of two imposing residential towers before unravelling at the entrance of the Botanic Gardens.
While the red ribbon weaves along the ridge between William Street and George Street, there is no parallel ribbon between the lower William Street and Brisbane River section of the site.
“The key idea there is not so much about the linear journey; instead it’s about creating important spatial opportunities,” Mr Tuma said.
“It will become a tartan of connectivity, with some fat connections and thin connections of parks and plazas criss-crossing with endless opportunities to engage the public.”
The available public realm is massive – bigger than Barangaroo – and Urbis estimates that at a peak capacity up to 190,000 people could fit into the site for events.
And while there is plenty of hype about the size and scale of the development, the planners behind the winning proposal prefer to say that it will end up being “more Monte Carlo than Las Vegas”.
