The Howard Smith Wharves (HSW) development has announced an exciting proposal for a 280 square metre overwater champagne bar and music venue, reports Brisbanedevelopment.com.

The octagonal bar will be stationed directly under the Story Bridge, expanding out onto the river on a new public boardwalk. The bar itself will be situated inside in the middle of the building, opening out onto a substantial outdoor lounge area on the pier boardwalk.

The five-star, 164 room Art Series Hotel is expected to be completed in 2019 which will consist of conference facilities, roof-top pool an four retail ground-level tenancies.

Last month the food and beverage outlets for HSW were announced and they included: “Fresh Greek” restaurant by restaurateur/chef Jonathan Barthelmess (Sydney); Hong Kong Chinese style eatery by restaurateur Andrew Baturo who is also co-owner of The Gresham (Brisbane); “Izakaya”, a Japanese restaurant by Matt Yazbek which is an extension of Sydney and Melbourne locations; a craft brewery; a bakery; and a coffee roaster.

The HSW site is 3.43 hectares in site, which will include 2.7 hectares of public space when complete, and will connect New Farm Riverwalk and the CBD. In addition, the project will be a new site for such public events and festivals and markets, include an underground carpark for 359 vehicles, and include 1500 square metres on exhibition space.  The estimated value of the project is $110 million. 

Staggering job growth of 398,400 new jobs in 2017 has broken annual records with the best figure since records begun in 1978, reports St George Economics.

300,500 of the jobs were full-time, and the remaining 97,900 was part-time.

November saw a 61,600 gain, with December figures ending the year with an additional 37,800 jobs. With regards to the states, job growth in December was as follows; NSW (14,300), WA (6,100), SA (1,300), TAS (600). 

While St George have doubts the current average rate of 30,000+ jobs per month can be maintained, they report the growth will be enough to gradually reduce the unemployment rate in time.

The unemployment rate slightly increased from 5.4% in November, to 5.5% in December 2017, with workplace participating increasing from 65.5% in November, to 65.7% in December. The report indicates the thriving conditions are encouraging potential workers to seek employment. 

Hannah Schuhmann says these figures are encouraging and show strength in employment, in particular the strong rise in full-time jobs. Queensland will now, over the next 5 years ride a wave of an EXTRA 50,000 jobs being added by some of the new projects being completed.

At a time when many are negative about the retail sector, well known and respected financial commenter Peter Switzer is supporting the opposite view, with the release of strong retail figures in November.

Online and in-store sales grew by 1.2% in November, following a 0.5% increase in October, the best result in 4.5 years. All states and territories in the country recorded a gain.

After the initial shock of Amazon entering the market, Harvey Norman’s share price dropped to $3.65 in early November, only to recover with a 20%+ gain to $4.43.  

More positive economic statistics of late include:

•  Job vacancies – Strongest yearly growth rate in 7 years up 16.1%, with the three months to November recording a 2.7% rise to 210,300 vacancies.
•  Council approvals for new homes – Had the strongest monthly gain a year, growing by 11.7% in November, after a drop of 0.1% in October. 
• ANZ/Roy Morgan consumer confidence – Last week saw growth of 4.7% to 122 which is a four-year high and substantially ahead of the long-range monthly average of 112.9.
•  New vehicle sales – Up 0.9% on a year ago with a record high of 1,189,116 units in 2017 (Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries). 
•   Occupied domestic flights – Occupied seats say the best result in 6 years, up to 79%. The Sydney-Melbourne load factor also saw record highs.
•  International passenger traffic – Saw total passenger numbers record 3.37 million in October, a 4.5% increase for the previous 12 months.  
•  Job advertisements – up 10.8% to the year in December. 

With the new year comes some good news for economic growth in Queensland, reports St George Bank in their December Economic Outlook report. 

Commercial construction has strengthened, business investment has gained momentum, growth in employment has been strong over the previous year, and population growth is picking up. 

Key points

Gross State Product (GSP) – while growth was evident in the 2016-17 financial year (1.8%), it was less than the previous year (2015-16 – 2.6%) due to such things the Cyclone Debbie the previous year, drop in mining investment and the slowdown of construction in housing. With that said, St George predict export volumes will push growth of 2.9% in 2017-18, and then a 3.2% increase in 2018-19.

State final demand to the year September 2017 saw a rise of 2.7%, an improvement on the 1.4% growth recorded in September 2016. (See below for explanation of 'state final demand')

Economic activity in the September quarter was restrained with household consumption remaining unchanged, and government investment detracting from growth.

Mining investment – In the last year, three LNG major mining investment projects wrapped up and the industry is now in a new phase of the cycle. Prices for coking coal has rebounded since the lows of US$73 a tone in late 2015, sitting currently at around US$236 a tonne.

Engineering construction has shown it peaked in 2013 and value of work has slid sharply since that period. That said, the two latest quarters have shown some good increases in QLD with an increase on 9.5% increase in the year to the September quarter.

Business Investment – in QLD, for the year ending the September quarter, a rise of 7.9% was recorded. QLD has recorded a rise for three consecutive quarters.

Commercial construction in QLD has continued to flourish due to thriving tourism, especially the international sector.

Population growth in QLD has shown a growth rate of 1.6% for the year to the March quarter.

The QLD labour market is showing improvement with annual employment growth up 4% to the year ending November 2017 (national long term average is 2.3%, and annual national growth is 3.2% to the year ending November 2017).

Note: "State final demand measures the total value of goods and services that are sold in a state to buyers who wish to either consume them or retain them in the form of capital assets. It excludes sales made to buyers who use them as inputs to a production activity, export sales and sales that lead to accumulation of inventories." (ABS)

The latest international tourism statistics to the year ending September 2017 show an impressive 2.5% increase in expenditure by international visitors to a staggering $5.3 billion reports Tourism and Events Queensland.

Total visitors saw an increase of 3% to a total of 2.6 million. Each of the 11 tourism regions in Queensland recorded growth in holiday visitation, while Brisbane hit record high numbers with a 4.6% increase to 1.237 million visitors.

Markets by expenditure

International visitation by region

With regards to purpose of visit; holiday was the leading reason with 1,831,000 (up 2.9%), followed by visiting of family and relatives with 630,000 (up 7.7%), 177,000 for business (up 7.1%), and 115,000 for education (up 18.1%).