By Margaret Maccoll
Noosa Junction’s successful business Lexis English may be forced to shift unless it can find a suitable location to meet the needs of its international students.
General manager Ian Pratt said the school, which teaches English, had enrolments of about 2000 international students annually and injected about $20 million a year into Noosa’s economy.
“There’s no building stock available. There’s been no development in the Junction since the ’70s and ’80s,” he said.
“You can’t put international students in 40-year-old buildings.”
Ian said the school needed a modern, 1000 square metre space and were looking at all options but under the council’s current planning scheme building something was unlikely.
Ian said the school had been in talks with council.
He said while Lexis wasn’t ready to pull the plug from its headquarters in Noosa, it needed to make a decision soon on its future.
Students come to the school mostly from Western Europe, but last year 100 nationalities were enrolled to study and they stayed in the Noosa area.
Established in 2004 as an English language school in Noosa Junction, Lexis has grown with five locations in Australia and three in Asia, training more than 8000 students annually.
