More big plans for Geelong’s waterfront, I see. This time, a soaring 34-storey condo off Cunningham Pier, looking flash, expensive and a pretty piece of architectural destination tourism to drive Corio Bay’s future fortunes.
You have to be impressed by the energy, ambition and thought behind these grand ideas. We’re talking billionaire Tim Gurner, the Costa family and the designers behind Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower on the planet.
Haven’t seen anything like it since we chased a waterfront Guggenheim museum, modelled on Frank Gehry’s mind-boggling Bilbao creation, 25 years ago. The city tipped in $100,000, even sending mayor Crutchie to New York with premier Steve Bracks to argue the case.
Bilboa’s Guggenheim
Or when Lawrence Elms spruiked his billion-dollar baby for Eastern Park’s Hearne Parade burnout site a decade later.
Or when Darryn Lyon’s spectacular iceberg-style Superman ice castle on a new Yarra Street pier sent detractors apoplectic in 2014.
Lyons’ ice castle proposal
Earlier, we had 1989’s IMAX theatre; would-be centrepiece of the megabucks Bay Link development, complete with international hotel, transport museum and convention centre.
The Geelong Regional Commission spent $1.8 million buying the seven-storey theatre and another $1.2 million on storage before flogging it to a Queensland theme park.
The transport museum idea became the Ford Discovery Centre, which folded in 2013. We eventually got a hotel in 2001 and a convention centre this year.
That convention centre was first mooted by the Geelong Chamber of Commerce in 1956. Seventy years on, it has arrived looking as if inspired by an empty budget hotel in Vegas. Someone please put a picture on a wall, it’s like a mausoleum inside.
The long-awaited convention centre
Forgive me if I’m not surprised at our water bombs. The Edge, for instance, could have been an architectural masterpiece and city landmark if its upper storeys hadn’t been scuppered by a lack of vision.
The waterfront’s strike rate is pretty crook, thanks to finance, politics and bureaucracies that couldn’t get out of their own way,
A few more duds down the years:
- Grand prix.
- Steampacket Gardens sailing pond/skating rink.
- Cunningham Pier marinas.
- Bay Link’s giant tent, a la Brisbane’s Expo 88.
- San Marco-style Venetian piazza.
- Bridge over the bay.
- Retired submarine.
- Tall ships museum.
Bay Link and the IMAX
In the 1950s, a Myer Music Bowl-style soundshell was proposed for Eastern Park but litigation intervened and the money went towards a new library storey, later home to the Geelong Historical Records Centre.
The long-running Geelong Speed Trials, launched 1956, stopped 2003 and restarted in 2012, are again under a cloud to spiralling costs.
Time and tide have claimed sentimental favourites: Hi-Lite Park, Yarra and Parkside piers, Eastern Park’s mineral springs, east and west swimming baths, the Joy Ark and the gorgeous Moorabool pier terminal.
The Gurner proposal
For all that chequered history, though, I’m quietly hopeful Gurner gets a guernsey. We need something sharper than the pier’s bland cardboard-cutout design, minus its once-pretty lights, as the waterfront’s centrepiece.
Cardboard cutout Cunningham Pier
Still, a Gehry might have been more interesting. Especially if, like his Disney Concert Hall, sunlight bouncing off its metal walls became a fire hazard, melting traffic cones, heating outdoor surfaces to 60 degrees and raising nearby indoor temperatures by up to 10 degrees. That’d be hot.
This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 10 November 2026
