Macquarie: Big Splash mortgagees open food tent to hold Crown lease

The mortgagees of Macquarie’s derelict Big Splash water park met a 1 November Crown lease deadline on Sunday with a street-food tent rather than a reopened pool, the Canberra Times reported. The vendor set up a tent, a barbecue, a few plastic chairs and tables and a single portaloo outside the boarded-up entrance. For anyone holding or selling a Crown lease in the Territory, the case tests how hard the ACT Government will enforce a lease purpose clause.

Leaseholder Translink Management Group and its financial backers had agreed to reopen the 50m outdoor pool by 1 November 2026 or risk losing the lease. The pool stayed shut. The lease also lists “an unlicensed family restaurant” as a permitted use, and Access Canberra had earlier agreed the leaseholder would be compliant if a restaurant opened by 1 November. Asked on Sunday whether the set-up was a restaurant, Access Canberra said only that it continues to monitor the site. Whether the vendor returns on Monday was not confirmed.

Why it matters

The site has been closed to the public since March 2024 and has since been vandalised and ransacked. Translink Management Group has received two controlled activity orders over the site’s condition and has never been fined. Access Canberra has told the ACT government it cannot simply terminate the lease, because doing so would legally be an “acquisition of property” requiring just-terms compensation, a figure Planning Minister Chris Steel has confirmed is not yet quantified.

ACT land is leasehold, not freehold. If the Territory says it cannot end a non-complying lease without paying compensation, that position matters to every leaseholder and agent handling a Crown lease, from Belconnen to inner-north sites such as O’Connor’s proposed 20-apartment building. Liberal MLA Peter Cain summed up the frustration directly: “The leaseholder is treating the ACT government as a joke.”

Greens leader Jo Clay said the government needs to explain if it considers the tent a restaurant that meets the lease, and separately proposed the government buy the site outright and run it as a public pool and water park. Save Big Splash spokeswoman Amelia Tattam has said her group has no issue with the food vendor or the mortgagees themselves, but argues Canberrans should not have to accept what she called regulatory box-ticking in place of the facility the lease was meant to deliver.

The numbers

The pool at the centre of the dispute is a 50m outdoor pool the leaseholder had agreed to reopen by 1 November. The owners were subject to two controlled activity orders but never fined. The ACT Government decided in late August to commission a report on “viable aquatic options” for the site, with consultant procurement due to start in October 2026, with minister Steel saying outcomes will be known in roughly nine months.

What’s next

The site remains for sale, according to Jo Clay, who said she checked with the selling agent. The government’s commissioned report on viable aquatic options is not due back for roughly nine months, so Access Canberra’s enforcement position, and whether the food tent keeps counting as the lease’s qualifying use, stays unresolved in the meantime.