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MORE Main Beach and Surfers Paradise residents are in favour of Sunland’s $600 million Mariner’s Cove development than against it, according to a new poll commissioned by the developer.
More than 300 people last month attended a rally against the project and other major developments but the survey, of 309 residents of the council Division 7, has indicated residents near the proposed development are supportive The phone survey, by Sydney-based pollster OmniPoll, was commissioned by Sunland to gauge support and found 49 per cent of people aware of the twin-tower plan were in favour of it. There was a near-even split of 24/26 per cent of respondents opposed or neutral to the proposal. According to the poll, males were more likely to be in favour of the project, with 62 per cent of those in favour. Women were near equally split between supporting, opposing or being neutral. “We did this survey to understand what is the feeling of the residents within Division 7 and the results speak for themselves,”Sunland boss Dr Soheil Abedian said. “The negative voices are always stronger than the silent majority and that is what we have witnessed with this project and a number of previous ones, including the Q1.” The poll of 309 people over the age of 18 was conducted between December 21-22 and January 5-7 in the council division, which takes in Surfers Paradise, Main Beach, parts of Southport and Chevron Island. The height of the 44-storey towers proved to be “important” to opponents but not to the majority of support. Traffic was backed as being a major issue for both sides of the argument, as was the complex’s design. OmniPoll partner and former long-time Newspoll boss Martin O’Shannessy said the survey gave a strong overview of feelings within the area. He said the survey, which had a 4-5 per cent margin of error, was conducted using traditional polling methods, weighted to Australian Bureau of Statistics data on age and sex to reflect overall population distribution. Main Beach Association secretary Sue Donovan said the survey’s result was “not surprising” but did not give it much weight. “Given the quality of the questions being asked, these results do not surprise me,” she said “However, far from being a noisy minority, I think our demographic reflects educated people and I would be surprised that this polling would hold up for councillors.” The council was expected to vote on the project last month but it remains under assessment. City planning boss Cameron Caldwell said councillors would consider the development as soon as officers had completed assessing it. |
