The average [median] price for a Byron Bay house currently is about $2.5m.
If all house owners sold their houses to developers from Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and possibly China, there would be collective funding to build thousands of dwellings to house all residents, visitors, workers, and wait staff from South America and Europe.
The buildings would have to be limited to say 200 metres high, as Byron wouldn’t want to look like Surfers Paradise.
Fifty storeys should do.
Council and the NSW Tourist Dept can get around a simple regulation like the current building height of 11.5m, especially as it is in the public interest.
The buildings would occupy the same space that the average house does now: 1000 sqm for each footprint.
The sale contract would specify that a seller would get the penthouse, luxury suite or ground floor villa as a reward for their enterprise. That’s only fair. As there would be thousands of these magnificent buildings, there would be fine housing for all owners. The rest of the dwellings would be sold at a fixed price of $500,000 or rented at $500 per week with life tenancy. The maths works out. Trust me.
The buildings could start at Clifford St, Suffolk Park, travelling north along the coast (with a two-kilometre boundary) to the lighthouse, drop a leftie there and continue, to include the Belongil mansions and Elements horse ranch.
All the tax-dodgy clothing franchises would be removed. Shopping, supermarkets and food outlets would be in the buildings. Single-storey shopping centres would become parks.
The complex would have its own electric train service from Suffolk to Ewingsdale. Travel would be free, paid by the Brisbane Tourist Tag entry fee collected by the huge sign over the road at The Farm toll scanners.
All politicians would preserve this project in legislation to allow for population expansion and inflation, and pertinent words ending in ‘ion.’
The Writers Festival could organise a workshop to name the buildings.
I’ve come up with a few: The Secret Outhouse, King Kong by Faze, The Hippy on Jonson, UTopi.A, and The Cashew Castle.
If a Council tax was imposed on the residential cranes, a handsome cash flow would be forthcoming, for the cure of potholes.
Because we do need good roads for the new housing.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
