THE Floriade came and went but, it seems, Andrew Barr’s “pop-up” shipping-container village at West Basin on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin is still in transit.

The Deputy Chief Minister launched Westside @ Acton Park on July 23, at the old futsal pitch folly, promising grandly that it would “dramatically change the way Canberrans engage with public spaces” and announced a staged opening with the first glimpse scheduled to coincide with this year’s Floriade.

But to date it looks like a building site, an observation confirmed to CC by one intending retailer who had borrowed money to take part and is grumpily paying interest with no idea, beyond a revised start date of December 1, when the payback begins.

The Land Development Agency’s last website utterance on this (also dated July 23) says: “Stage One will be a vertical village offering retail, dining and events. There will also be a viewing platform to take in some of the best views in the city.”

Coffee to go

SENATOR Zed Seselja is trumpeting that construction work on the Commonwealth’s Centenary gift of $42 million to upgrade Constitution Avenue is poised to begin and, channelling Andrew Barr, predicted transformative economic miracles as Civic’s “booming café culture” expands towards the lake. All this from new lighting, street furniture, large pedestrian zones and 220 new oak trees.

Hollywood calls

CANBERRA’S singing plumber Vince Gelonese is off to walk the red carpet at the Hollywood Music Awards in Los Angeles. Earlier this year, Vince’s original song “Every Dream” hit the top spot on the Billboard Hot Single Sales charts and scored him an award nomination.

Wife Melissa says Vince wasn’t sure about going until he heard that LA publicists were tipping him as a possible “favourite nominee”.

Pete, left, and Dave Shaw… storage app stars.

There in a snap

LOCAL couriers Dave and Pete Shaw have devised what they think is a world first – a snap’n’store app to help people locate “stuff” in storage.

Every item entering storage in their Fyshwick facility is photographed and assigned to the customer’s online photo catalogue. So anyone who wants something out of their storage space selects the item and, bingo, it’s on the doorstep within 24 hours.

“I don’t know how many times we’ve had to climb over mountains of dusty boxes and furniture, or shuffle items around so we can access something important,” says Dave. “We thought there must be an easier and more modern way.”

Two free, standard, local pickups or deliveries are included each month and the catalogue is updated by Snap‘n’store after each pickup or delivery.

More information at dpssnapnstore.com.au

Hmmms…

IS this appropriate for the impartial Assembly bureaucracy to be tweeting this sort of leading rhetorical question: “Will investment in light rail make Canberra 1 of the worlds most liveable cities? In #YourAssembly after 2:30 question time”?

MORE tweetery: Greens Minister Shane Rattenbury tweets: “Soon to speak in the Assembly about #Canberra’s OECD ranking & life in our beautiful bush capital. What do you love about #CBR?” He doesn’t know?

AND more again: former ACT government bureacrat Jeremy Lasek entered the “wasteful new lights on Northbourne” debate on Twitter with this logistical arithmetic: “Surely Step 1 Light. Step 2 Rail = Light Rail.”