The Sunshine Coast has received a retail boost with a substantial new investment by Harvey Norman. Known as the Maroochydore Homemaker Centre, it is the first new major bulky goods complex to be built in South East Queensland since 2009.

Designed by Leffler Simes Architects to be a prestigious bulky retail destination, the $130 million centre also features cafés on the ground level. To make the most of the five hectare site a basement car park for over 900 cars has been included and the first floor dedicated to commercial office suites and a gymnasium.

ADCO Constructions built the centre with Coolmaster contracted to design and construct the mechanical services.

Fantech’s Queensland branch, Air Design, supplied eight car park sound attenuators and over 100 fans for general use, smoke-spill and for the car park. Senior Technical Sales Representative Kent Taylor said the combined smoke-spill air flow rate was well over 500 cubic metres per second (500m3/s).

Coolmaster Senior Project Manager, Adrian Wallin, said they had worked on the project for 15 months during which time there had been a few hiccups.

“The large building footprint (450 x 75 metres) posed a challenge for the installation of the air conditioning units, and the corresponding insulated duct work, as they were cumbersome and difficult to manoeuvre. Normally these would be simply craned into position, but the building span was so great the crane would need to be set up, the product lifted into position then the crane be pulled down and repositioned for the next lift,” Adrian said.

“This would have been costly in both time and money. The solution was to employ a helicopter for a full day on four separate occasions.”

“Although expensive, the helicopter was a cheaper alternative compared to a crane because of its increased efficiency,” Adrian said. “For example, several air conditioning units that were too heavy to lift with the helicopter, had to be craned in – using this method only five units were lifted in a day. In comparison, the helicopter was constantly on the move, only landing in the compound to refuel and as a result we airlifted 23 units in a single day and on another lifted 35 smoke-spill and four car park fans”.

Adrian said Mother Nature had also created some unusual challenges. In late March a once-in-a-century weather event dumped 130mm of rain on the Sunshine Coast in an hour and almost 400mm of rain fell over a six hour period. “The deluge caused flash flooding and several fans were damaged,” he said. “Air Design replaced them as a matter of urgency to reduce any delays on the project.”

The centre opened in November 2012 and is anchored by Harvey Norman with other major retailers including Domayne, Nick Scali Furniture and Joyce Mayne.