Inside the Commonwealth Games Village
BQ takes a look at the state of the art Comm Games Village. More than 6,500 athletes and staff are currently residing within the Gold Coast’s Commonwealth Games village which covers the newly finished 29-hectare Parklands site which had been under construction since 2014.
The site now boasts 1252 permanent dwellings consisting of 1170 apartments and 82 townhouses which provides accommodation and services for the officials and sporting stars.
The redevelopment is one of the largest urban renewal projects ever undertaken on the Gold Coast.
The village is broken up into three zones International, Residential and Operational and has been designed to capture the essence of South-East Queensland’s colourful cultural heritage, paying special attention to sunlight, shading, natural air flows and water.
Each room is designed like a holiday apartment with single beds, balconies which look over the Games Village, bathrooms with showers and a small television along with basic tea-and-coffee-making facilities.
The village also features a fully staffed gymnasium, recovery rooms, special services for wheelchair athletes and people with prosthetics and a drug-testing centre which handle both drug and blood testing.
The village’s polyclinic is expecting to treat 270 patients each day and will serve the medical needs of all residents 24 hours a day.
It provides Optometry, Podiatry, Radiology and Wheelchair and Prosthetic services and emergency medical care and will even have a mobile dental van – a Commonwealth Games first.
There are four pools and an area for running and walking, but for those who have had enough of getting fit the village also includes a bar and games room for athletes to unwind.
The main dining area will serve more than 18,000 meals daily and will meet a variety of requirements including dietary, nutritional, recovery, cultural, religious and medical.
The village is expected to supply athletes with 800,000 pieces of fruit over the Games period including 121,000 bananas.
After GC2018 the village will be turned into a mixed-use residential community with the apartments and townhouses to become available for public rent and possible purchase from early 2019.
GOLDOC believes the games and the village will generate $2 billion for Queensland and $1.7 billion for the Gold Coast economy.
