ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
The French Quarter is alive with optimism this morning as the new student housing development began welcoming the residents ahead of the third trimester beginning next week.
Over the past two years, the large development has caused traffic chaos in our town’s fabled cultural hub so residents are calling today a red letter day for the area. Not because the traffic situation is set to improve but because the demographics of the French Quarter will never be the same again.
A large redbrick apartment block once sat at the intersection of Rue de Branlette et Rue du Putain where the new Scape student housing development sits. In it lived families, city workers, pensioners and retirees.
The land was sold by the apartment’s owner and the redevelopment frog-marched through council.
South Betoota Polytechnic College is one of the nation’s most prestigious hybrid tertiary/vocational education facilities. Students come from all over the world to learn from industry leaders and thrive in our cosmopolitan desert community.
In recent years, the French Quarter has suffered from a large demographic shift. Children of our town’s well-heeled Betoota Grove residents have moved in and turned the Quarter from a colourful and vibrant into a suburb with the highest chino-to-leg ratio in Western Queensland.
The latest development is “progress”, according to a young mother who spoke briefly to The Advocate in the coffee queue outside the Pisse Dans Ma Poche Cafe on Rue de Branlette.
“Men used to smoke on the stoop of that old apartment block and I’d smell it when I walked past. They were smoking near my baby, too,” she said.
“Having international students in our community is a bit of a boon. So many better businesses will move in now. Like ramen but made by white people for white people. Mid-level Chinese? Sushi and maybe even an asian grocer? I think that’d be great.”
“Hell yeah, it’s great having more housing in our area without having more people move in here.”
More to come.
