SPRINGWOOD COMMUNITY FORUM Saturday 25 August 2007 at Springwood Bowling and Recreation Club
The Mayor, Cr Jim Angel: This is the second forum today. I will just introduce a few people, if you don’t know them. We have several apologies from councillors: Councillors Hamilton, Searle, O’Grady and Anna Brown have apologised. Cr McLaren, Cr Myles and Cr McInnes have attended, so welcome to all them. We also have some staff: we have Group Manager, Peter Adams. Cr Van der Kley has walked in the door so he will be here as well. And the staff who some of you have probably met: Janne Yardy, Maurice Brady, David Hewetson and someone who will be providing assistance throughout, our consultant David McGowan who was previously a member of Blue Mountains City Council staff working on these sort of matters previously. I won’t take up too much time because I know there is a full agenda here, and a whole presentation and I think we are just very interested as a whole to get some feedback, talk about what the issues are if there are any, and what should or should not happen during the whole of the process. It is more of a thing to get that sort of information; there will be a report back to Council some time later, but it is our intention to ensure that when we talk about any of those sort of matters to ensure that decision at the meeting will be held somewhere in the Springwood area. So without further ado I would like to hand over to Julian Crawford who is our facilitator. Some of you have already met Julian. He will take you through the next couple of hours of presentation. Thanks Julian.
Julian Crawford: Thank you Mayor. Welcome all. As the Mayor said, I am Julian Crawford. I actually live in Wentworth Falls but I was told there was a workshop around this Springwood Town Centre development back in March. I recognise a few faces. How many people were at that particular meeting? Yes that was my indication. This is obviously an open forum. Just a little bit more: we had an information session this morning between 10 and 12 ahead of this public forum. Could we just have a show of hands: who of you attended that part of the day? Thank you. And another show of hands: who are then sort of fresh to the mix now? About half. Thank you very much.
In terms of process today we are recording. The plan is to get today’s discussion recorded and then transcribed and then it will be put onto the website in about seven to ten days time. And just to let you know that whatever you say here will be taken on the record there. We are obviously here to talk about the Springwood Town Centre project. We have just got a few slides. The structure that we are going to adopt, recognising that some of us are coming from more of a standing start than others; others will be really immersed in these issues and thinking about it. You were here this morning and discussing it with Council staff etc. Others of you are just sort of getting your heads around the opportunities and the implications. So what I am going to do in a moment is hand over to David McGowan who was previously with the Council, and then leave it to other Council staff to give us a bit of a context around it.
The text for today is the Options Report. How many of you have seen or had access to a copy of this? Does anybody want a copy right now? There are a few still available over there. We have got enough. That was prepared by Council and just put out; it’s on the website, and has been for a week or so ago now. The very last page – I think I am right in saying – of that document has got the heading “Submission Process”. “How do I make a comment on the options report” is the very last page there. We have also got to help you with that process a submission form, and I wanted to sort of encourage thinking towards to giving – encouraging everybody who wants to say something to put it down in writing and submit it to Council as part of the process. Who here would like a copy of the submission form? Take some and pass them around then at least we will know that. They were designed to facilitate comment and encourage that. In that vein today it is all about giving you some more context to make comment.
So the structure we have got is we are going to give a reasonably structured overview and introduction, given from Council’s perspective: what we have done so far, what is the process, where are we at, reflecting the content of the options before us as it is at the moment. Hopefully that will bring us all up to a sort of level playing field of understanding of what the issues are and the opportunities. The bulk of the time is going to be really around a discussion around what emerges from this group, and it is always hard to anticipate in advance where the focus of interest lies. So we will explore that together. We have undertaken to finish by 2.30 at the latest. I think the clock up there is running about five minutes fast. Probably we will end by about 2.25 or so just to respect the time of everybody here. So I reserve the right if we are going – unduly discussing or if I feel the discussion is getting out of balance or going off on tangents to draw it back. Thank you. I am absolutely rapt to see you all at this meeting. To see all you people here as there are, when I was talking to Council and we were talking about the format and the structure of the day, one of the unknowns is how many people will turn up. It sort of depends on the weather etc. I would encourage you to speak out.
The opportunity here is to hear different points of views and perspectives, help each other out in terms of articulating perspectives. Listen and reflect; I mean we have got the two ears and the one mouth. I think there is some opportunity to challenge here but we are not – as you will see, we are trying to give these potential options and opportunities a bit of an airing. We are not here to nail the priorities necessarily. This is, as you will hear in a minute from Council an interpretive and on-going process. So we are not going to get out the post-it notes and try and prioritise things. That is a stage we will come to a bit later. I think there is an opportunity to be “big picture” and creative, and this is potentially a fantastic opportunity for Springwood and the Mountains. We would really love to get it right. The time for getting it right is up front, isn’t it. It’s a bit too late you know after whatever happens. Respect each other, and you know, be fairly clear. Any comments or thoughts around that? Are you all pretty happy with that?
(inaudible)
Julian Crawford: That was misunderstood. The forms here are the forms that will eventually be going into Council. We are not collecting – not specifically trying to collect feedback as of today. It is feeding into the process of Council as it says on the submission form.
David McGowan: Let me clarify that. The submission can be in any form, it doesn’t actually have to be on this form.
Julian Crawford: No, this is a guide, a stimulant. It helps you for collation purposes. This is a convenient format for Council, to lay things down. But that being said, I think as far as Council is concerned all feedback is good feedback, so whatever form it takes – photographs and the like, written essays, you know. Any other questions at this stage before I hand over to David McGowan? David is known to many of us here. David is going to give us an update.
David McGowan: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming along today. I am currently a consultant town planner, but I was formerly the Manager of City Planning at the Council up until about seven weeks ago, and had a little bit to do with the preparation of the material that you are going to receive today. I was tasked with investigating the options for the three sites that you will have seen in the documentation in January of this year. Council had previously undertaken considerable enhancement work in the town centre, and there has been streetscape work that has been done which we will have all seen. The town square has been developed and I think there has been quite positive feedback on those works that have been done to date. Of course they have been there for a little while. Concerns were expressed about the continued strength or the commercial strength of the Springwood Town Centre, and those concerns have been going on for a period of time, and the Council as a result of those concerns, feedback from the community and the Chamber of Commerce, undertook site inspections of other towns. I believe they went up to the Hunter 18 months or 2 years or even a bit longer ago, looking at options as to how you can enhance town centres. But it was as a result of feedback from the community to say Springwood is having a little difficulty, in present times economically. Now following the decision in January to explore the options ---
Male: Something was said this morning about Woolworths making an approach to Council.
David McGowan: I think that there have been approaches to the Council. Personally I have never seen an approach from Woolworths. That is all I can say.
David McGowan: Following the Council decision to explore the options for the three sites, we held a stakeholders’ meeting in March of this year, and I think given the room today quite a number of you did attend that, and there was good feedback at that stakeholders meeting. We held it on the other side of the highway. That was before we produced the Stakeholders Report which is on exhibition at the present time. The feedback did include the confirmation from a range of people about the economic issues that we are talking about, or the business issues. But probably quite significantly so, there was raised the issue about community facilities and the need to come out and talk about these proposals, to look at the community facilities in the town: are they good enough? Do we need to enhance them etc? That point was taken on board by the councillors and the Council. Now we have prepared this Options Report which is on exhibition as Julian has pointed out, and the report addresses the three site options. The report will, when we get feedback from you, and Council decides what it wants to go out with, it will address development opportunities, that is commercial development opportunities, but also the community services needs, and that is in the documentation. I might point out that Council isn’t the sole player, but is the primary player in this, in that one of the sites which we call the ‘northern car park’ is partly owned by the Department of Lands. Now they have joined with – they have agreed to work with the Council with this project. Now the exhibition of the Options Report seeks feedback before Council decides that it is the product that it actually wants to go out to the market with. That is the purpose of today’s meeting is an introduction to that, as Julian has pointed out. There is an exhibition period where we want to hear what you are saying about what the Council is going out with. Are there any questions on this?
Julian Crawford: Yes that’s a good point. Does anybody want to put a specific question up to date?
Female: Yes I have a question. In all of this, if we have development, what are your alternatives? Because that is the most part of retail. Take parking away from the town centre, take parking away from that land, what is the Chamber of Commerce going to need? I counted down there in the early ‘80s: they had 300 at the back of the parking station. Now I just can’t understand how the retailers aren’t here, I was once a retailer only for 8 years but a wonderful experience, and parking is sensitive. The solicitors and real estate, parking isn’t as important to them as it is to retailers, because people will come here. We are lucky in the town we have got professionals, we have still got the banks, we have got the medical centre, and we have got the (inaudible). In the ‘80s – I thought I saw someone here that knew about it – they were going to get rid of the health centre because of the structure, it needed just demolishing. So we are destroying our town, and within a couple of hours – another woman who was well known in the town, Joan Benz, they know her. She was in retail. We got over 500 signatures and it was Dick Jackson-Hope that took that petition up to Council that night and they decided not to demolish the Baby Health Clinic. These are the things that bring people to the town. Katoomba wouldn’t know about it or Lawson. Shopping times. The men would sit in the park with the kids or mid-week the women who come there for a rest, and you just see little kids play. These are drawcards. Once we had the Scouts Hall. Once we had the Girls and Boy Club, it’s down in the bushes now. So I just think that we have got to be a little bit strict in thinking about this. I don’t want to hear about the Upper Mountains – I get enough of that in the Gazette, and this is the last thing I will say. Don’t tell us about these things in Council which I will hear it is in the Gazette; we don’t read Council (inaudible). We know what goes on in Katoomba most of the time, and actually I do like Katoomba but with the parking, I just can’t believe the stupidity ---
Female: Well you should have come earlier.
Female: What about the parking there. What about all the shops opposite down (inaudible) as well as the back behind our town centre which I can’t see from here from there (inaudible) – what was his name? (inaudible)
Male: I just wanted to mention it is a beautiful town.
David McGowan: Just a brief response on the car parking, the car parking that you do mention. In the document there we do refer to the issue of – the proposal are potentially on the car park site, yes on all of the sites, they are car parking to some degree.
Female: What up above or park (inaudible)
David McGowan: Well that is what we are going out to the community about – or rather the private sector: would you do a development on the site, but you will be required to meet the Car parking Codes. So the car parking would involve replacement but also the provision for the new development. Now that is one of the criteria, one of the constraints of development is to provide car parking. So that has to be a business proposition that has to come before the Council to make an assessment of, but we are highly conscious of the fact that-yes there are primary car parks out in this place.
Male: Excuse me, I have come late. So what is the reason for this restructure in Springwood? Why do we need the – organically you have got a lovely country town with perfect growth to keep it going. Why do you plan to stop it all? To change ---
Male: We are not.
Male: Well why have any changes?
Male: There may not be a change.
Male: (inaudible)
Female: The likely motivator for Council is that our community facilities do not meet community needs.
Male: Why don’t they?
Female: Because they were built in the ‘50s; our City Centre is not capable for us to have an air-conditioner which means it is unusable; our library, though it is a wonderful library, is too small for certain purposes.
Male: (inaudible) Are we asking to rather than having a change in the nature of this town to sort of (inaudible)
David McGowan: Could I just put like a time out for a second, because we have got a structured process here, and I think in fairness to everybody here that we pursue the next segment which was to give the big overview which will address I suspect some of the issues that have already started to be raised.
Female: I had a question for David. Excuse me David, I may have misheard you, in what capacity are you here today? A former Council General Manager, you are now a consultant returning – what is your now relationship with the project?
David McGowan: Right. I was the Manager of City Planning with Blue Mountains City Council.
Female: And involved with this project?
David McGowan: Yes, I was the one that wrote the report to the Council in the first place, and up until seven weeks ago I was taking the process through. In producing this Options Report, I gave input back to Janne and the staff of the Council. (inaudible) I had left at a difficult time. I agreed to come back today to help them present with the process today. That is my sole ---
Female: So you are not a consultant on this project now?
David McGowan: Well I am in a sense a consultant, yes.
Female: Do you live here?
David McGowan: No I don’t. I did live in the area for – up at Leura for about a year.
Female: You didn’t live in Springwood. Was your contract paid from Council?
David McGowan: Yes.
Julian Crawford: Can I suggest let’s have the quick run through of the material, of the Options Report because that will give us a better context I think for the questions that we have already started on.
Janne Yardy: I will try and keep this brief. We have got the mike for questions so that we can actually make sure we capture your comments. Now, I am Janne Yardy. I’ve taken over managing the project when David left, and I’m a member of the staff within the City Planning team. There is, I guess, within that a need to maintain some continuity, and I am very pleased to be able to continue to work with David in a small capacity to have that continuity with the project because it is an important project. Now with the Springwood Town Centre project, as has been explained already, it’s about the options. The Options Report on display is about how we see any proposals for redevelopment. So it is that process and that framework which was presented today, and I apologise to the half of you who were here this morning but the other half may have missed and may benefit. Now I guess the context of the project is Springwood as a district centre; a district centre for community facilities, a district centre for retail and commercial; and that is something which we are continuing to reinforce and maintain. In recent years as we have discussed, there has been a decline especially in the retail sector because of other competition both locally as well as from Penrith. We are seeking ways to reinvigorate and maintain that status, and the services that are very important for the local community, as well as - some of those services are City ones as well. So we manage three large sites in Springwood: the northern carpark, southern carpark and the Civic Centre library site. They are all either managed or owned by Council and it is intended that the private sector be invited to make submission to redevelop a site within that, and a higher density within the Planning Code and potentially upgrade all public facilities, our community facilities. I am just going to slide off the sites which you have already seen with Julian: the northern car park here, with the Baby Health Centre in the playground with public toilet for southern car park, excluding the town square, and the Civic Centre site, which includes the Civic Centre, Braemar and the library. I would also – quite a large car parking area to the south.
Janne Yardy: This here, the area adjoining the supermarket behind the Civic Centre and behind the library is all ----
(inaudible interjection)
Janne Yardy: This is existing what we have already. We will get to parking, yes. One of the principles is that we maintain enough lane marking. So I guess the 25 Year Vision is that it was developed with the Council and the community guiding this process, so there is some very important principles behind that, often over the use of land within our urban footprint, so that we don’t encroach on the bushland, and enhancing the existing qualities of our town. Now that is something that we already experience in Springwood: the village character. So that is one of the key elements that we will be following with this process, developing the opportunities to live and work in town, maintaining or expanding our opportunities with residential as well as employment within the town centre, and encouraging population growth in the larger centres with the infrastructure to support it. Springwood has that infrastructure. And centralising the location of services and facilities. Again, centralising and maintaining the density? And doing that within the context of a World Heritage Area, so implementing what is sensitive urban design; best practice in terms of urban development, environmentally sustainable. We have that capacity and we need to encourage that here as well. Now these considerations are we tune in with community benefit through realising the public asset that you have within Springwood. We have a very valuable asset in the land that is zoned here, retaining and enhancing our community facilities. So making sure that if one needs to be replaced it is replaced; we don’t lose on commerce getting better here; but also having some funding to actually enhance what we have here, and bring it into the 21st century, contributing to the viable retail and commercial centre and providing either a recurring income stream which can be through lease or joint venture or market value, best price for the land that we own, if it is for sale. In the Stakeholder Workshop, we worked on the vision we would follow. Now with the Master Plan which was developed for Springwood in the ‘90s, you can see the vision there. We have presented that as a vision, a draft vision in this Options Report, as well as the process. So we are all following what we want here, of this, and we also outline the environmental, economic and social outcomes that we want through the process. Now they will guide the expressions of interest. Now the key things of those, subject to the potential within those new facilities for traffic and parking considerations, as you have been raising, and conforming with our planning policies. With the community facilities we are expecting the population to grow, not a large amount, but 8 per cent over the next 15 years. I apologise, I won’t quote numbers with you but they are readily available. The population is ageing. So the facilities that we will need will need to cope with a margin here for older people. So the project, the Springwood Town Centre project seeks to expand, enhance or replace existing facilities. We have done the study in-house. Council staff did a study through interview and through survey of all of our Council facilities in Springwood, and our Council services. We spoke with the service providers, so we know what we have now. We have an initial idea of what we will need in the future. Now between now and last remaining to do are the details. It is important to understand what we need to be enhancing and replacing in Springwood. There is the opportunity to consolidate the Civic precinct through this project, so as to make it better and enhance it better. But if there is a need to do or relocate any facilities or services, we need to have very careful additional planning so that what is happening is able to continue to operate during any reconstruction period. So there are many considerations that we have. I will hand over to David Hewetson, who is my colleague in City Planning. He will talk about the transport and the planning considerations.
Julian Crawford: Thank you David.
David Hewetson: Springwood is in a very good position, in that it is well-serviced by public transport, certainly by City Rail at least. It’s at the end of the Western Line and it is served by urban services down in the city and hourly services on the boundaries. We get more frequent services during peak hour in each direction. The town is constrained or limited at the east and western end, because of the subways that go underneath the railway line, and linking to the highway is a major issue. The local roads are quite long and there is difficulty getting from the northern side to the southern side of town unless you actually prepared to go right down Homedale Avenue or Raymond Road at the other end. Of course any re-development on any of the sites we do need to put the cumulative impact: what is it going to have – what sort of impact is it going to have – being generated – what demand is it going to have with the parking, what impact is it going to have any retail or existing facilities. In terms of the parking, the back of the envelope assessment which was done earlier on this year by Council staff. We basically went out and looked at what was the number of car parking at the moment and how many car spaces were occupied. As a result of that the assessment was that there is sufficient car parking at the moment but it did note that certain areas such as the north car park are subject to higher demand than say other areas such as Greenway Lane and the southern car park. The point that I think you were making about the car parking, the whole issue of car parking being made here is that the bottom line is that any re-development must comply with the Department standards for the plan.
Female: (inaudible)
David Hewetson: I don’t think you are wrong by a long shot. Female: That is the most important thing in the street. Interfere with it and the retail will ---
David Hewetson: That is exactly my point. The bottom line is the existing car parking must stay. Any re-development must provide sufficient car parking for other activities as well. The bottom line here is we do not want to see the existing car parking supply diminished as a consequence of re-development of any of the sites.
Female: So you are saying as a result of re-development we will end up with a net gain in car parking in Springwood?
David Hewetson: That would be in the proposal, yes.
David Hewetson: Okay, basically what their promotion is that if any of the site is re developed, the developer must provide not only the existing car spaces, but they also must provide car spaces for their own activity.
David Hewetson: (inaudible)
Male: So he could build the development he has got to provide special car parking. He is not going to be able to use the car parking (inaudible)
David Hewetson: Correct.
Female: (inaudible) That was a suggestion.
David Hewetson: Again it is very firmly based (inaudible) it specifically tells about where the parking is going to be located and how it is going to be arranged.
Male: It is might be useful just to think about that.
David Hewetson: I understand that.
Julian Crawford: Do you have a mike? With the air-conditioning you can’t hear too well.
Janne Yardy: We are going to have an opportunity to discuss this in a bit more detail. Just looking through this information quickly ---
David Hewetson: In terms of the town planning zones, all three sites are owned by the Council. Each of the three sites is subject to project and precinct assessment standards for the height of the buildings, and density, how many buildings you can get on the site, and it has also got details about maintaining amenity and all those sorts of objectives and policies as well. The town centre also has the accessible housing area which enables housing for older people, and those with disabilities. Now as everyone knows here, the southern car park does slope. That doesn’t prevent development but it says that if you are going to develop in that area, make sure (inaudible). The southern car park is a mixture of Community and Operational Land. I will get to that point in a minute. The northern car park is a mixture of Operational and Crown Land. Now, if we are looking at any proposal as a consequence of this process to re-develop the southern car park site, there may have to be a reclassification of the land to Operational Land. This means that there is a separate amendment to LEP 2005, which again has to be consulted on, will involve consultation and public exhibition. The same point about if there is any proposal for land development standards for Springwood precinct. That has to again be amended through LEP 2005, and consultation leading to exhibition, and again the opportunity for the community to point on what their proposal contains can be made. I guess really importantly this amendment to LEP 2005 is totally separate to the process that we are doing here. Any development applications for the sites is again separate to this process.
Janne Yardy: There are a number of options that are going out. There are identified a number of options of how we could actually explore proposals of interest or expressions of interest for re-development of the sites. We chose one of those options now, which was option 2, which is to put all of the three sites out together, all proposals, and to do that with a list of concepts. The concepts are up here - they are also explained in the Options Report – to guide any proposals, to say this is what Council and the community expect out of the re-development of these sites. Now any of your submissions will also be able to inform those concepts. That is a very important part of this public exhibition process is to be able to get comments from those, on the concepts or on what we expect out of any re-development of any of those sites. I will just like to hand over now to the three ward councillors, who would like to talk briefly about how they see this process operating, because it is very much driven by the councillors.
Cr Myles: I just want to make some comments. I made some comments to the morning session but I will ask Cr Trindall and Cr McLaren as well. This is a planning process. As you can see you have been given a lot of information. It is also a political process. Council has no option; it is going to go out probably to the private sector. That is driven by political will. We represent that political will. We answer to you as the community as elected officials. So if you are wondering how did this all come about, for many years the community has been saying Springwood needs things done, the Civic Centre is difficult to use in summertime; other facilities: their time has probably come and gone. The library is improved. When Coles went in out at Winmalee, (inaudible) with David Smith we went to the Hunter Valley, had a look at some of the shopping centres up there to see what the impact would be on Springwood, to see what had happened in Cessnock and Port Stephens and other places. After Woolworths was gazumped by Coles, they came to us informally I believe. I wasn’t party to the discussions. But they came to us informally and said you have land in Springwood, the only land in Springwood that could be used for development is council-owned. We want to talk to you about doing something. Our response is we will work up a process. This is that process. The public can see documents that go out to the private sector and see those submissions when they come back here. We are doing that because as I have said we don’t have the money to upgrade the community facilities. We are a very cash-constrained council, and to give you the result that you deserve, the facilities you deserve, we also have to put all these options down for you to understand that is what the process included. There is no agenda. You may want to believe that and you may not. There is no budget allocation. The Council doesn’t have a clear idea of what it specifically wants to achieve. We are putting this out so that the private sector can tell us what they propose and what the benefit will be to the Council and to the community in return. I think that is as far as it goes. Talking about specifics, there are none. We will know at the end of this year, in December, we will receive some proposals from the private sector. That is all I’d like to say, but you are entitled to hear from your Ward councillors.
Cr Trindall: I am Lyn Trindall. I live at Winmalee. I work at Winmalee Neighbourhood Centre, and I appreciate you coming today. I appreciate all the Council officers and councillors coming today. It is very important that we listen to people and as one of your ward councillors, and as a councillor I am light on experience – I’ve only been there twelve months on this this Council, we really want to hear from you and talk to you. If you don’t do that, well we are doing the wrong thing for a start. As Cr Myles said, and I have said this morning, I believe that there is no agenda here. There is no community broad agenda as far as – we have to have a Coles, we have to have a Woolworths, we have to have an Aldi. I don’t believe that that is behind this. I believe that it is being driven – community facilities in Springwood are pretty old, some of them are run down. We have got air-conditioning problems, we have got all sorts of problems. Now we need a new Civic Centre. So I think that going back to what Cr Myles said we are only at the very beginning. Let’s not get caught up. Let’s not get worried that something is driving this. I don’t believe it is. I think we need some more community facilities here, updated facilities. Maybe more, but certainly updated. We go out to the market, say see what’s there, and only a “see what’s” I might add at this stage. Let’s see what’s there. If somebody came in and said we could build a new Civic Centre along with car parking and all the things that the community needs, well we would go along with that. I think that is all it is today. I appreciate your coming. Thank you.
Cr McLaren: This is driven by the councillors, by our desire to provide special facilities for our community. The others live locally. I’ve grown up in this area, so I am familiar with a lot of the issues. As many of the speakers here today have said, we have an ageing population. Not only do we have an ageing population, we have an increase in population with people with disabilities. We currently cover a number of services, community groups, NGOs. They have asked us to help provide accommodation, we cannot do that. We don’t have the facilities here to do that. So members of our community are missing out because NGOs, community groups cannot provide adequate services. Some of the services that operate out of Springwood Neighbourhood Centre, like the Vietnam Vets, they are so constrained in the spaces they have that they are not able to provide the services that they want to provide and get things such as their counselling services are limited because of the lack of space. Now as our population continues to age, as we continue to have an increasing number of people with disability, the need for these services will continue to rise, and we do not have a capacity to increase over what we have currently. In addition, some of these more mainstream services such as the Council office over there, I’m sure you have all used it at some time, it is tiny. My last experience in there was I was in there to arrange a family burial at a time when it can be quite emotional and quite distressed. At the same time my family was doing that, there was someone screaming about their rates notice. So there is no privacy, no room to have any type of conversation because you are so constrained. So our Council staff do a wonderful job and are not able to provide the services to the community because of the constraints of the facility. I have already mentioned earlier that at the Civic Centre we have many wonderful organisations that use that. I think it is on a Tuesday afternoon a senior ballroom dancing group uses it. During the summer months they are quite constrained in what they do because people who use that are over 65. It can get to be over 40 degrees in that room.
[Change of tape]
Cr McLaren: That is not because we manage our money badly. It’s because we are constrained by the money that we have. In New South Wales there is rate-pegging, and even if there wasn’t, I don’t think the community would appreciate their rates being doubled, which is in effect what will have to happen for the Council to be able to afford to do things, and these projects are quite expensive. So we could only do them on our current budget if the expense of our roads, our footpaths, our garbage collections (inaudible) which basically we are willing to provide. So the reason that we decided to try this path and nothing may come of this. We may not get an option that the community likes. We may not get an option that the Council likes. Ten years from now Springwood may be exactly as it is, which I think would be a great shame in that we will not be able to provide the facilities to our community, and that is what has driven this. There are no hidden agendas. It is just an agenda to want to provide better services to the community and we recognise that to do that we may need to work with the private sector.
Male: If those are so important to Springwood, those issues, how come they are not identified, how come we are not addressing fact and saying this is what we need, how will we go about achieving. Why are we trying to sell three blocks of land a day, if we are getting property values for each block of land?
Cr McLaren: There is no discussion here about selling any land.
Male: Why aren’t we identifying the issues?
Cr Myles: I think they have been identified very clearly.
Male: You haven’t – you have said you need some more space for the Vietnam Veterans. It doesn’t say we need the Civic Centre to be 5000 square metres and/or 200 people; we need this, we need that, because if you just re-developed the Civic Centre you might need a smaller place.
Cr McLaren: No, because one of the things in that is that we cannot have less than what we have now. That is something that from the very very ---
Male: So we could just get exactly what we have got at the moment.
Cr McLaren: Our staff have identified that there is a need for enhanced facilities. That is very clearly there.
Cr Myles: It is in the document you have got now.
Male: I have not seen any ---
Janne Yardy: We have done a study into this – what we need to do – and we are going to do more detail on that, and so ---
Male: I was thinking we need to find out what we need before we know – the cart before the horse.
Janne Yardy: We have noted that as an issue.
Cr Myles: I have to respond to that. We can’t do what you are asking because we are not the ones providing the cash. They will be for any potential re-development. The people who will be paying for it which will be the private sector will be the ones who will put a proposal to us. We will work out whether that is acceptable or not. We can’t go to them and say well you are going to do all this for 5000 square metre Civic Centre or some other thing. They will say look, we can’t deal with you because what you are asking for is not something we can cover. We have got a fairly loose array of site plans which they can negotiate with us in your viewing ---
Julian Crawford: Just to re-cap where we are at.
Female: Can I just say that we are losing time for our public end because we are not getting anywhere. We need time to be able to have our say and we are just getting more and more and more of the input ---
Julian Crawford: We have tried to show to you what we are doing. I mean we have been hearing from people probably a bit ahead of the process. So just to re-cap, there is a number of options here which if you have had a chance to look at them basically – the different options and opportunities and Council is basically saying we prefer option two. There is one thing for feedback of the options canvassed, and it is pretty much “do nothing at all”, through to consider all options. There is an opportunity for input on that. If you saying there may be an option to do nothing right now, that is one thing to think about. If you do have a look at the options, then you have got the three different sites, and I just wanted to say that here in the Options Report there are some initial indicative schemes, I think prepared by Council, which summarise the overall – I suppose it is a synthesis. I haven’t been involved myself in the preparation of them, but it is a synthesis of some of the ideas and themes that have been coming through. There is an enormous range of topics that we could consider but now we have got the context, if you like, from Council about the process, and some of the parameters. So I want to throw it open to allow people to have their say, but to do that we are going to have to be disciplined about giving each other time to hear, and the opportunity is we are not here to – and it’s not directly question and answer, because this is an exploratory process for all of us. I think just think about that, and respect that, because we have had a number of people trying to get “the answer” to “the question”. What we are trying to do here is to stimulate our thoughts individually to allow us to make submissions. The councillors are here on "receive mode". They have just made some comments from the background or the process. So I was thinking we have got two ways that we can handle this. We can either have a look at the generic issues about the overall planning process, or we can go site specific, and I am happy to do both. It is a question of what the mood is. But we want to try and canvass all the dimensions, both site specific and context overall. Do people have a feel? Do you want to have a look at a particular site?
Cr Myles: We want to hear whatever they have to say. We really need to throw it open.
Julian Crawford: Okay. I will give a bit of a time out once we have – because we have got 60 people here. We have got about a minute each, so respect that. I will take the lady right here. Just on that, we had thought about whether we should ask people to state their name, rank and serial number. We haven’t been doing that so far on the basis that this is just a general flow of discussion. That having been said, I am not going to require you to state who you are, but if you particularly want to say who you are, then by all means do so.
Female: Okay, my name is Ann. I have lived in Springwood for 37 years and I have got a few things to say. First of all, Springwood, its retail area and its environments as far as I personally and as far as a large number of people that I relate to, think Springwood is pretty good. We also have friends who visit from out of the area, out of the Mountains altogether, and they can’t say enough about what a beautiful place Springwood is and it has got everything we need, apart from a whitegoods place. I would say we have got a conflict because we need income to fix some things that desperately need to be fixed, but I don’t know the solution, and I am very concerned about option two. First of all, I think we do need a social survey before we move any further, and that is going to throw the timeline out and I don’t think some people are going to be too happy about that. I think we are asking to do too much, too soon.
Male: Hear hear.
Female: The next thing is we need Council to develop a set of expectations cum obligations if we proceed with option two, not just a nebulous “these are some guidelines”, because we don’t want people such as Woolworths or whoever coming in and changing the culture in Springwood. The expansion of the library and neighbourhood centre are certainly first priorities as a lot of us see it. Our second priority is refurbishment of Springwood Civic Centre. Provision of more supermarket space and more shops is very low priority, and it seems to me very clearly the very small need for these from stock population projects in tables one, two and three on pages 30 and 31 of the report. If we get more, as proposed by option two, there is a good chance that current businesses will die and the community will be worse off. Options that commercialise current services are not on. I don’t want to be paying for parking in Springwood, pay to use the children’s play equipment, or pay to use the library etc etc, and I can’t see big major retailers coming into the town prepared to offer services for nothing. I would also like to say that residential in the centre of town is not on. People lock up parking spaces if they are residents. There is plenty of room for the current zonings for medium-density residential development very close to the town. Thank you. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Show of hands: who has got something to say in the next half an hour? I just want to get a feel for who has got "set pieces". Okay, that is about half a dozen of you. So we will give you about a couple of minutes each on that.
Female: Hi, I am Diana. I have lived in Springwood for about 17 or 18 years. I guess this is not a set piece but what strikes me about this big picture is that Ms Yardy made a statement: “We have identified what the future is going to be”. Well I’m sorry but I think it’s not just up to the Council to sort of decide well this is how the future is looking. I appreciate you have probably done sociological studies about ageing and so forth, but I guess what I am hearing is that the Council is picking on infrastructure. We are going to have an ageing population so we need infrastructure. But it’s not always about “stuff”, buildings, physical material things. It can also be about how a centre is run, how a neighbourhood centre is run, how a library run, and also very much in this town is like – the Council has made the statement “we must provide, we must do this, we must do this for you the residents”. But there’s something wrong there, it’s like paternalistic. A lot of the things, the social welfare things that I feel that you are sort of targeting here, people can cope quite well by themselves, particularly if they had a vibrant, lively streetscape that encourages them to interact with each other, that encourages convivial gatherings, and if they feel they are in a friendly town, they are not about to be mowed down by a bus or a prime-mover, those kinds of social needs people can sort them out themselves. Council doesn’t need to necessarily go “Oh we must do that for you, you poor people of Springwood”. On the point of the Civic Centre, well on the point of the three sites, two of those sites work brilliantly. The town centre is already providing that convivial centre heart of the town. The car park behind it is functioning as a car park. It is open, it is visible. Rapes and break-ins and crimes and things will not happen in a car park that is open to the air that’s visible. The other top car park is functioning beautifully for what it is: a car park and it has a toilet in among it. So those things should not be sold off; they should not be mucked around with or interfered with. On the subject of the Civic Centre, people are – I mean, Councillor Myles, you said “You want to give us the facilities we deserve”. I detect a sort of an ad campaign in that. Like okay, we don’t all have to have air-conditioning. Why do we have to have air-conditioning? Why can’t we sit there and get hot? What’s wrong with that?
Cr Myles: It’s a health and safety issue.
Female: Well not necessarily. I mean my point is it is not necessarily about a very high level of facility. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Thank you. Would someone else like to speak? Please acknowledge each other in your usual way, bouquets and brickbats.
Female: I haven’t got a lot to say. I’ve lived in Springwood all my life. I don’t look like my age. (laughter)
Male: 33.
Female: Thank you. The Mayor mentioned a venue for a function or whatever such as this. What about the Springwood Civic Centre, what about refurbishing and adding air-conditioning? What about refurbishing the Council offices? When I have been to the Council office, I’ve been the only person there. David mentioned that we are looking at this from an economic and a community point of view. I personally think it is an economic point of view. Someone mentioned that it seems to be too much too soon. I agree with that. Councillor Myles mentioned a trip to Cessnock. I know Cessnock. It’s a disgusting place. There is an old town and there’s a new town and they don’t meet. The old town has fallen apart, and the new centre where everyone goes to is completely alienated from the old section. That’s about all I want to say for the time. I just think that Springwood is Springwood and we love it the way it is. With the refurbishing some whatever, it can be better. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Thank you for respecting the two minute limit. Yes thank you.
Male: I am Michael, from Faulconbridge. I got involved with the Council back in 1992 when the Purdon Report came out. The Purdon Report had an executive summary which said: sell off the Council land to solve the problems. Then I looked at all the figures in the Purdon Report and came to the conclusion that some of the recommendations in that report, some recommendations in Fox [sic] Report, and later the recommendations in the Masterplan were the right solutions. Issues regarding parking, issues regarding roundabouts, access, town square, the under path underneath with the railway, these are all items which are from those master plans have been done, and they have been done, and we have got a successful Springwood. It looks very nice now, and I’m very concerned that all because “come in” and it is all fine to sell off Council land to solve a problem. If we just sold off the Council land in 1980 to solve the parking problem then, we wouldn’t have what we have got now. If we sold it off in ’92 we wouldn’t have what we have got now. Springwood is looking very nice and if we have got an issue in regard to community facilities, let’s raise that, let’s put that down, and then try and solve the problem, rather than let’s looking at the Council land and saying oh, here’s some Council land, let’s sell it off and then we can plough the money into community facilities. I’m very concerned that the Council has gone down the track of spending $100,000 on doing these reports without spending $100,000 in Springwood instead. We could have spent $100,000 in Springwood rather than doing these reports, because I don’t believe the issues have been thoroughly investigated. We’ve got problems with the northern car park, we’ve got problems with the southern car park, we’ve got problems with the Civic Centre, and without identifying those problems, you know, we have already been ten years down the track, with no change. Sorry, I think we are doing this the wrong way around. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Anyone else?
Female: Yes. I am Elizabeth. I don’t know whether I understood correctly or not. Did I understand there were no contributions from businesses that are developing or from development operation, and if there is no contributions, why not? Because these would be funding some of the things that we are needing.
Janne Yardy: Can I answer that? We were talking about – the comment was made in relation to contributions for parking to be provided elsewhere rather than providing parking on-site. There is no capacity at the moment for a developer to pay Council to provide parking elsewhere. We need to provide parking on-site. There are other contributions to provide other services.
Julian Crawford: Yes?
Female: I don’t need a microphone. I’ve got a pretty loud voice. I teach 16 year-old boys. You all listen so much better than they do. I’m Tara, and I have just got a couple of things to say. Firstly just speaking to a lot of people, I think one of the concerns that people have are that they are really concerned about the culture of Springwood, and they don’t want to change to sort of be “Springwood Heights” as opposed to Springwood. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are opposed to development, but they are very concerned that right from the start that the issue gets raised, so that we don’t have a town that looks like, as someone eloquently said this morning, I think it was your wife, she made the point beautifully, just that it doesn’t look like sort of the exact same copy of other places that you see. I think that is very important. I think the other thing from my perspective is the environmental issues. We talk about air-conditioning but wouldn’t it be wonderful if there is to be redevelopment that we could actually look at building design that doesn’t make air-conditioning your number one priority.
Female: Absolutely. (clapping)
Female: Because solar passive design, they are things that I think – we are not just a village, we are actually a village within a World Heritage National Park. If we are going to go down any sorts of options here, l I think we have got to have that in our minds right from the start. The third thing is about selling off land. I think people would be happier – well I shouldn’t say I think people will be – but many people I speak to would probably be happier with lease or joint venture to some degree. I don’t know all the details of that but people – you know, you sell off now and you get money to do something but what about in the future when you need living expenses. So anyway, that’s all I have to say. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Anyone else? We are getting a nice range of comments and observations.
Male: I’m Philip. I probably represent the Civic Centre more than anything else. I have spent a lot of time there with the Concert Society and the Musical Society. If you have spent as much time as I have at the Civic Centre, you realise that (inaudible) should be paid to come and blow it out of the water so to speak. But still there seems to be two attitudes here that are coming out very strongly. I will mention those in a moment. I think the issue is: do we need to change Springwood. Now if the answer is no, I think that is very disappointing. Some time along the track for my grandchildren and their children, Springwood has to change. We are the custodians of Springwood at the moment, but I live at Mount Riverview. But to have a fortress mentality or a conspiracy theory mentality is not going to help Council. It is not going to help you personally, and it is not going to help the residents of the Lower Mountains which could use Springwood – wards three and four are the main users of Springwood I would think. Everything else is done further up the Mountains. For instance, from a ward four perspective, the Mountains don’t start till Wentworth Falls. Anything below Wentworth Falls is not really the Mountains. I’ve heard people say: we don’t want a McDonalds. I’m afraid to say but on the Mountains there is a McDonalds, it’s at Blaxland. But people don’t regard that as the Mountains. Now I think Springwood has to change not only to service us, but to service our children. My interest is the Civic Centre. It is not working. It is trying to do too many things. It goes from Friday markets to ballroom dancing to garden clubs to Meal on Wheels. A civic centre is not meant to do all those things. So that site itself has to change. Parking: two of the major parking places or three of the major parking places in Springwood are very inconvenient. Tonight there is a lovely concert by Kathryn Selby at the Civic Centre, a musical concert by the Concert Society, and people will be parking in the Civic Centre’s parking. They see the need to be mountaineers to get from the bottom of the car park to the entrance of the Civic Centre. If you have a disability, and people have suggested people have disabilities who are now here, if you are over 65 and have a wobbly knee, it is very difficult to walk from your car.
Female: I’m 85 and I use it.
Male: It is very difficult to walk from your car up to the door. It certainly doesn’t add to the ambience of going to a concert. The other car park which is on a slope has already been said is not used as much as the northern car park. The other car park that are behind and up behind the other ones and down below, behind the shops, you have got to walk up stairs for them. The lighting is so bad that you can hardly see the stairs from where you park your car. In other words, what I am saying is parking is very inconvenient. You mightn’t like Penrith Plaza, but you can get a shopping trolley from your shopping to your car far more conveniently than you can for most parking places in Springwood, if you like shopping in Springwood. So I think change has to happen. I think we should manage that change. Maybe we are trying to do too much at once, doing three sites at the same time. But when everything is filtered, maybe it would only take one site at a time. I agree with Council’s way of doing this because you can’t come up with the specific plan for what we are going to do until you do what we have done. Once we know what the Council suggests, then we can start arguing about, no, we don’t like that. But until we get that far, we have to go with the process as it is now.
Julian Crawford: Thank you. Anyone else? At this rate we won’t get to everybody.
Male: I’m Michael. I’m a local building designer. I’d like to just make a couple of points in relation to some of the things that have been raised. As part of the Civic Centre’s air-conditioning issues are concerned, that building, and I’ve been in it myself, it’s a dinosaur. It needs to be redesigned or some air-conditioning hasn’t been fitted to it to make it work properly for the purpose that it is being used at the moment. That’s not a big issue. You can get someone to do that; and perhaps a new roof design which allows for passive ventilation rather than air-conditioning would probably be a better solution. All that aside, somebody made the point earlier that they didn’t want a residential component in town. Well the LEP 2005 actually allows and encourages residential development in Springwood itself. Why? Because I believe that when you put people into a shopping precinct and you have them living there, stepping out of their front doors in summer time to go to dinner or to go to the café which is now open because there’s actually people in town, makes for a more vibrant township. It also discourages a lot of anti-social behaviour which is a real problem in town at the moment. We complain about the lack of policing and all the rest of it, but there is no-one in town at 2 in the morning and drunks rampage up and down the street. I know. I’ve lived right in the centre of town for about five years. I know what goes on. If you put people in that situation we could create a better social environment. It was made mention of a field trip to Cessnock to say well gee, we really don’t want that. I agree with what has been said but there is a complete and utter alternative to that. I lived ten years down in Jindabyne, down in the Snowy Mountains, and when the Snowy Scheme flooded the initial village and said don’t worry about it, we are going to provide you with a new shopping centre and a new town just to the south of where the lake is going to be, they built this concrete and steel edifice which is a very soulless, horrible place, and it – the town’s fabric fell apart. Some time after that, about 20 years later, a private developer bought some adjoining land and redeveloped a new town centre, a shopping precinct, included some medical facilities, some community facilities, banks and restaurants and supermarkets there, and it is a doughnut shaped building so you have got this town centre-type situation, it works spectacularly well, to a point where the old town centre built by the Snowy Scheme was almost defunct. So there is right and wrong ways of doing these things, and having private sector money come in to develop these things is not a bad thing as long as it is managed well and the community benefits. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Thank you. Could I just have a show of hands, just out of interest, who has been to Cessnock?
Female: I used to live there.
Julian Crawford: Who has been to Jindabyne as you referred to? It is interesting to see different models and think about them. More hands, yes? Let us here from you.
Male: Hi I am David, I’m from the Springwood Chamber of Commerce and Springwood Newsagency, and a resident, and I personally am in a total state of confusion about the whole thing. As a resident of Springwood I would like to see nothing happen. I live close to town. My kids can walk to town, they can walk to school. I don’t walk to work because as Michael says, it’s not the safest place in Springwood sometimes at a quarter to one which is when I usually start. So as a resident I love Springwood. I love living here. I love the people here, and we are always asking what “village atmosphere” means; it means to me you see people you know all the time, you talk to them, you chat to them about the stuff that’s important to them or not important or whatever, because that’s important to you as well. As a businessperson however, I’d love to see massive re-development in Springwood because that would be the obvious hip pocket response wouldn’t it. Alison said that if we don’t do anything to Springwood it will be the same in ten years. Unfortunately that is not the case. Springwood will die unless something is done about Springwood. Now it has got to do with facilities. Certainly the Civic Centre etc, all those sites, they have got to be re-done. There is no doubt about that. But somehow, people have got to be attracted back to Springwood as a retail centre. Now I don’t care what anyone else here says about Springwood being a vibrant retail centre. It is not anymore. I can assure you of that. Now that’s had personal impact on me, and there are a lot of businesses in town the same as me; it is a sort of a siege mentality. In the last two years I’ve lost 2000 customers a week. Now you tell me where they are going, and you tell me how I can get them back. And I can tell you the siege mentality goes down to the struggles in business which require you to really seriously re-think your overheads, your own personal lifestyle etc. Now we are a strong business in Springwood, so I don’t know how the less strong businesses are going, to be honest. If you work outside of Springwood or outside of the Blue Mountains and you would like Springwood to stay the same, don’t forget that you have the option of working elsewhere and earning your income elsewhere and occasionally using Springwood. But Springwood is not a convenience store. You can’t just use it when you feel like it and hope it is going to be there is ten years because I can tell you now it won’t be there in ten years. And I’m saying from the point of view of someone who genuinely loves the town, but I stand inside my shop some mornings when I’m feeling lyrical and I look down towards in this direction, or that direction, the railway station, and go “ah I love Springwood”, at sunrise it is wonderful. To come up from the railway underpass here, turn into Macquarie Road, and look at that vista, especially in two or three weeks time. What a place to live. You can bring your kids up here. My kids can walk – I’ve got ten year-old twins at Springwood School, they can walk from in Macquarie Road up here to that school, cross one road, and do it in safety. Hundreds of other people do that. That’s one of the beauties in Springwood. One of the other beauties is that they can be stopped by ten people who will say hello to them. We can’t do without that. Any development has to take that into account. So I’m confused that in all my different capacities as a human being I don’t know what I would plump for to be honest. But certainly we have to do something. We can’t sit on our hands and say “Springwood will be alright in ten years time”, because I will tell you here and now it won’t be. If the decline from the last two years is any indication, it will not be. I don’t know why people go to Winmalee to shop instead of coming to Springwood. They are obviously doing it. I can’t see the attraction myself but others do. But what I’m saying is that there are so many places for people to go at the moment that it is leaching away from Springwood and Springwood will just die away.
Julian Crawford: Thank you David. (clapping)
Male: My name is Kevin. I own Springwood Stationery, down the back in Raymond Mall. I’m a bit like David, I’ve lived here for a fair while. I like the town as it is but on the business-side, I see the business perspective the same as David. Our trade is disappearing. But then again I do like the open space. Any more than this number of people in a room this size and I’m out. But why can’t Council look at redevelopment of the existing developed land that is there. If you look at the land that’s there, there is so much wasted space in – unusable space. People turn around and say “The rents in Springwood are governed by too lesser number of landlords. Now there are plenty of landlords in Springwood. It’s just that many years ago one real estate agent got all the rents up. So that was down to basically one real estate agent, not all the landlords. And developer, wherever. So it wasn’t that there are not enough landlords. There’s plenty of landlords. Maybe we have too many landlords in Springwood, because if you look at the buildings they are getting dated. Some of them are getting pretty shoddy, if you look around the backs of them. They are getting – so maybe Council should be looking at the re-development of existing commercial areas and leaving a few of the open spaces. I’m not against maybe as one person said “leasing the Council land”, but I’m dead against selling the land because once you sell something like Federal and State governments have this plan on doing, you’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater. You’ve got nothing to come home to. So that’s it. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Thank you. To the next one in the room.
Female: I’m Carol. I’m the manager from Springwood Community Health Centre which also incorporates the Early Childhood Centre, so that is one of the things that I actually look after. I guess I’d like to speak on behalf of all of the women with children in the community, when I say that I am somewhat concerned about the proposal that the Early Childhood Centre, well we know it as the Baby Health Centre - I’ve lived here for 37 years, so we call it that, but it is really called the Early Childhood Centre – to be relocated down behind the Red Cross Hall. I’ve got huge concerns about that, in women coming into town to actually visit the nurse at the health centre that actually brings some prosperity to the town. They will often visit the supermarket, they will go to the chemist, they will go over to the newsagent, etc and do a lot of their business in town, incorporate their visit in one time, having to sort of put the baby once in the pram. If we actually bring the Early Childhood Centre down to behind the – sort of where the Red Cross Hall is, I’ve got concerns not only for the accessibility of these women, the difficulty of the parking, the lie of the land there isn’t – it’s quite sloping. My staff, I have concerns for their safety, vandalism of the building. So there are lots of real concerns that I have for the proposal of the changing. Not only that, the little playground that’s actually there is in a very safe spot. It’s in the middle of town. It’s quite a hub there. People come and people go. Often I see dads there minding the children while the mothers actually go to the supermarket etc. Grandparents often are there with their grandchildren, and it is very safe for the children and family to actually be there. So I would just like to express my concerns I guess. I will be writing a submission with regard to the proposed change in the building. Thank you. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Anyone who hasn’t yet spoken?
Yes. Female: I live in Faulconbridge. I came from Sydney. I used to come up here once a month with my son who lives at Glenbrook and we used to go up to Leura once a month, and we used to drive past on the highway, and from the highway Springwood looks absolutely dreadful. You’ve got the backs of all those shops, and there is nothing to encourage people to come into Springwood if they are travelling up the Mountains. I feel something should be done to the back to actually make it look better because it is on the high side. I used to say to my son, “What’s in Springwood, have you been there”, and he said, “Oh nothing much”. He was from Glenbrook. And we never ever stopped, and it is only when he decided to sell and move up here because our family is up here, that I actually got in to see Springwood. And I just thought it is a beautiful, little country town after where we came from. Certainly the appearance of it could be improved from the railway because it does look very messy and old and it is not encouraging tourists to come into this area. I always feel like Springwood is like the half-way point for tourists who are travelling up the Mountains. I have had people say they used to come to Springwood for coffee on the way up to go further up, if they are taking visitors up that way as well. Someone here said today that we used to have tourist buses come into this area and they don’t come anymore. The problem is no facilities, there are no places for them to have lunch, but I think this site, this town being re-developed, perhaps there will be facilities for people to drop off and have a meal here or something like that. There are many small things you can do as well as the large things. I know you have got a public phone but I feel like it should - you know, I had noticed. I like main - the one-way street, and I don’t see it a great problem to have to travel from Homedale Street to Raymond. That’s not such a huge problem to park your car there. That’s all I’ve got to say at this moment. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Anybody else?
Yes. Female: I just wanted to say I didn’t realise that the retail section was being affected so much as David said, because I was a pharmacist in Springwood for 15 years, and we have always had – I wasn’t on the management side of it. My mother came to Springwood in 1946, and I came with her, I was only 3. I like Springwood. I have been only living back here now for 16 years or so, but I do think the Civic Centre needs something done, but as somebody said, and I hadn’t thought of it, an underground covered in car parks are not really a good idea because they are vandalised so much, and I think the longer you can leave your car parks out in the open, the better. Of course the nature of Springwood means there is not an area for re-development. I live four houses down in Raymond Road and I don’t want car parks down Raymond Road because when I was a kid there was never any cars. I remember Springwood a really long time ago and I went to school in the middle of town. Springwood Avenue wasn’t there and it was a lovely little town. It can’t stay the same of course. Something does have to be done but I wouldn’t like to see underground car parks. That is one thing I wouldn’t want to see. (clapping)
Female: Anna is my name. I have lived around here for about 20 years. I have just a short question for one of the officers from Council, on the preferred option two in the paper. My reflection is it describes or identifies the possible range of the major retailers and supermarkets. It is an interesting omission but Woolworths is not included as one of those and yet we hear today that it is indeed Woolworths who has contacted the Council about the possibility of a re-development of the Civic site. Whoever prepared the Options paper is either disingenuous, intentional, or incredibly reckless to leave off Woolworths when in fact Council is on notice that it is indeed Woolworths who seek to come into the town and could I please ask for an answer as to why Woolworths has been not referred to in the issues paper.
Julian Crawford: David, would you like to respond to that?
David McGowan: The whole point is that Council has talked about going out to the whole of the market, so it can’t go and speak specifically to one company. It would be publicly accused from a probity point of view, so that we are conscious that companies are interested, and as Councillor Myles has quite clearly made that point. Where with option two we are saying go after the three sites, and let the whole market respond to that, and then Council can consider what comes back. One of those may be a company which involves Woolworths. We don’t know.
Male: You identify there were several companies; Woolworths is in fact a major agitator on the development.
Male: They use the term “two national majors” which refers to Coles and Woolworths. It didn’t say in plain English “Coles and Woolworths, Aldi blah blah blah”. They refer to Coles and Woolworths as “two national majors” which is just poorly written. It’s not easy to read. It’s poorly written.
Male: Can I speak plainly. These people do not speak plainly because they are consultants and planning professionals. I’m a tradesman so I speak that way. I read it and I understood it that you had meetings ---
Cr Van der Kley: I am Councillor Van der Kley, I am a ward two councillor. I’m down here to listen today. Just on that comment, it won’t be just the two majors because I’m in the food industry myself. You’ll find that there will be two majors, and you will find a one FoodWorks, you will also find IGA, Metacash, they are also – for on this green site, that is classified in the food industry as a “green field site” and all of them are looking at it. I can tell you they are all looking for a green field site, whether it is a major or an independent or whatever the case may be, they will all have a look at it and they will all put proposals in, but whether they do or not, it will have to be a commercial decision for them at the end of the day.
Female: What’s a green field site?
Cr Van der Kley: That’s what they call a site like that which has been already built.
Female: But it has got a Civic Centre and a library; that’s part of your green field site?
Cr Van der Kley: What the industry calls, they call a site like this whether it has got something, any infrastructure on it or anything, they call it a green field site; it has potential for development for retail in some way or the other. It is what they classify these sites as. So they will look at it, they will do their figures and they will come back with it, and they will look at the Council’s conditions and then they will come back with a proposal for it. That is what Council is trying to do here. It is trying to get feedback from them what they will propose. Council is going to put conditions on it, that is for new infrastructure to be put on it, and they will have to take that into consideration at the end of the day. Just remember this, that they will make a commercial decision where Council will – councillors, and I am one of those councillors, will have to make a commercial and social decision, and we have to take into consideration what the community says, and we have to take into that into consideration in what we are going to get back there at the end of the day. All right. So it is not just a commercial decision at the end of the day.
Male: --- cynical exercise and we need perhaps to have some faith in the process throughout this, but there is some responsibilities that the Council is going to actually have to be fulfilled to ensure that we are not cynical and suspicious about the process. So the degree of cynicism and scepticism is probably right, but it is possibly also based on a lack of information so far. The process I’ve seen today looks to me like to be an open and transparent process, and I hope that that continues. I think the Blue Mountains Gazette, and I know one of their representatives here has a responsibility there as well. I also trawl through the Gazette every week to find out what is going on with the particular project, and I find it somewhere. It needs to be a priority in the reporting process so that we are kept formally involved. The councillors that are here, what I am hearing is the priority is the community services, not commercial at the moment. I take David’s point. But the priority that is being identified here it is very much about community services, in particular that Civic site across the road. But if you need a message from this meeting, and it might be skewed because of who is here, that is certainly the message I’m hearing. I said at the previous meeting that there is a culture in Springwood, the character of Springwood, and I think you are hearing that very clearly that we want that maintained. I think I introduced my son, he is now 17, to the shopkeepers in Springwood before I introduced to any of my family, such were our relationships with the shopkeepers, and I think they are still pretty solid. So we don’t want to overlook the fact that perhaps they are struggling in certain areas. And David, I know you are involved in the Chamber of Commerce, perhaps the Chamber of Commerce needs to be here in greater numbers and shopkeepers in Springwood need to actually be looking for some of the solutions and I know that they are, David, but perhaps they need a louder voice in the forum. The other thing I picked up before was the ugliness of this side of Springwood to go on the highway. I suggest we look at Springwood - there is a lot of land there which is not particularly attractive, and we have got the possibility for parking or residential or something but on Bakehouse, on Blackheath Bakehouse, right through to some of the public car parks, there is a lot of places there behind some of the shops there you could say is wasted. It is quite nice having open and green spaces but they are another area that could be used or utilised. They are my thoughts. Thank you. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Might we adjourn?
Male: Just very quickly. Morris, from Horizon Accounting. I’d like to comment on two things: Chamber of Commerce. The reason the Chamber of Commerce was not very involved was because we can’t get more people on the Chamber of Commerce, because everybody is so busy being busy. Second point: none of this will actually affect my business so I am independent in that sense. Something needs to be done about the traffic, and someone might have mentioned that already. That is part of a big process. I appreciate all the drawings up there.
Julian Crawford: Thank you. Anybody else who hasn’t yet spoken?
Female: Yes, I would just like to say that Winmalee Shopping Centre hasn’t done any favours for Winmalee; it hasn’t done any for Springwood. There’s not enough parking there, as well as it being what I consider an unattractive shopping centre. There’s already a couple of supermarkets here and I don’t think Springwood needs any more supermarkets. I think maybe a marketing campaign to encourage people from the area to shop in town is what is needed. And maybe the shops do some community fundraising to raise at least some of the money to redevelop the Civic shops. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: Anyone else who has not yet spoken for the first time who would want to before we go on repeat?
Male: Yes, my name is John. I’m at various functions here: Blue Mountains Musical Society, Out of the Blue when it was alive, the Lions Club of Winmalee, and it is still going well and it is enjoying its time out at the Winmalee Shopping Centre because Coles gave us permission to run a shop that we do there on a regular basis. This process I think it is fine, it is going well. Because I have been involved in music society life for ten years in the Blue Mountains, it has been a wonderful time for me. My children have grown up here in the Mountains. They went to school at Winmalee High, have been involved with community societies all through, and then they have gone through university in the performing arts areas. It has launched them into their careers I hope. You will hear more about that over the years I hope. But nevertheless the Civic Centre is an anachronism. It needs to be knocked down. I had the Opera a few years ago, and I had an offer from the Rural Fire Service to --- (laughter) - after they had spent one sweltering afternoon watching all of the shows that we were putting on. But I declined that offer you would be happy to know, and it never happened. But in hindsight maybe it should have. However when I look at the situation with the Civic Centre, and the other sites in Springwood, the place is beautiful, I love the place. That’s why we moved here. But it doesn’t work well. People have mentioned how ugly it is down the back here, but that’s because it is a great opportunity to hide ourselves from the passing parade, because if we have too many people coming in, then it becomes a problem. But then in David’s situation you would rather have the customers coming in. I’m quite happy to have more customers. The way I look at it, we don’t need more retailers hiding out the back to draw customers away from the main street, but it’s not an impossibility to put offices into this area. I mentioned it this morning approximately 25,000 people live in the Springwood – Winmalee – Faulconbridge – Valley Heights area. About half of those people, going on the national average, are in the workforce. Eighty per cent of those people travel outside the Mountains to go to work, which means that 11-12,000 people don’t work in the Mountains from this area. They are working in businesses that are paying rates to other Councils. Subsequently this Council and this is about somewhere in the order of $3-4 million per year in rate money that they could have if the businesses were operating in this area and employing those people. Now we are not going to get 10,000 jobs in this area although that is what the area calls for in terms of the number of people who live here. But how many of those jobs can we get into this area to revitalise and support Council’s operational needs and financial needs and bring more money into the area, and more people into the area, for it to renew. So my theory is we revitalise the Civic Centre, we take it from where it is now as a small hall multi-purpose, and it doesn’t suit anyone’s purpose very well. We turn it into a performing arts centre and we support it with offices of about 3000-5000 square metres of office space. We get the State Government involved. Phil Koperberg isn’t here today but he could be and should be. He should be bringing at least one or two State government departments into this area, a couple of hundred people. The Federal Government could do the same, and if you have got those kind of ambit groups that are operating out of here, then you will add the possibility of a much more financially viable day-to-day operation for the area. (clapping)
Julian Crawford: My take is that we have heard from about 80 to 90 per cent of the people who are from a part of the infrastructure, whether councillor or Council staff. We have got about another five minutes or so. I’m inclined to allow maybe a final 30 seconds or so from a few. Do you think that would be interesting? I know that there are a few people agitating. I’m just conscious that we have got the time. I am just going to invite you. Just keep it short, and really pithy as a way of bringing us to a focus on helping all of us individually to make whatever formal or informal decisions we can make. So I will go first with you, and then with you, and then with you. Very short and sweet.
Male: Very quickly. I’m not against development. What I’m asking for is we do it the right way around. I’ve heard a number of issues here: the lack of sales and also other items. The shop top housing, that’s a very interesting one. I can go around and I can show you shop top housing which have been converted into commercial use, offices. I think that there is a lot of validity in what a lot of people have said here. I haven’t heard anything that didn’t have validity. Safety is an issue with underground car parks, and I am really worried about safety. All I am saying is that I think we should be raising all these issues, putting them out, and then seeing what’s the best way of doing it. You’ve suggested building offices. I think that’s an excellent solution. But what I’m hearing is that we are going for green field sites and that the people who are going to count are going to be all these and the other supermarkets. That’s what I’m hearing. (clapping)
\Male: Yes I want to say something really pithy. An insight into the mentality of people who live in Springwood, and I think it is a really good thing. I’ve seen people park outside my shop coming to get their paper doing a U-turn, park on the other side of the road going to IGA down the road, and park and then go into the shop that’s adjacent to where they’ve parked. That’s what people want in Springwood, and that’s what villages do. You can’t have it with multi-level parking facility unfortunately. We want that to stay but we want the advantages of everything else as well. Unfortunately that doesn’t work. In a development in Springwood the last thing we need is a mall or a plaza. But if we do get one, I’m going to start selling hats so people can put them on backwards as they go in, because that’s what you see in malls and plazas, you’re hanging. There’s plenty of places in Springwood to hang already without a mall or a plaza. If we get a development it has to be – I think one of the suggestions is a street front opposite our shop, Macquarie Road north car park, that has to be in character with the town. That sort of thing may be possible. But the last thing we need is Woolworths move in with 5000 square metre development which has – you know what I mean. (clapping)
Male: I haven’t got a big voice. I’ve been here in business for 35 years. I think what David says is right, but I feel that you are all amateurs. I hear all the same arguments I heard ten years ago: “I don’t want anything to change. I like Springwood just the way it is”. David is right. It can’t stay the way it is forever. You all seem to be very amateurish. I know you mean well but you are all talking from your own little perspective: like I want a bigger Civic Centre, and I want to do a play or I want to put houses above shops and make it like Italy which it is not going to be. Why don’t you get a developer to come in and talk to you, talk with the Council and what really happens about development. Development is not Woolworths. Woolworths don’t develop anything. They get in there and they rent from a developer. That’s the way it works. So if you speak with a professional developer, he can tell you that you can’t build half a dozen little shops in Springwood and call that a re-development. No-one will be interested, unless Council provides very cheap land it’s not enough scale. You have to have more development of some sort than what was proposed ten to twelve years ago, which was the whole southern car park being taken up with a big development. So you get a big retailer which is what everyone who shops here says I want a Woolworths or I want an Aldi or whatever.
Female: Not everyone.
Male: Not everyone but I would say the majority. If you went out and polled everyone, that’s what you’d get, a lot more. It’s human nature. We all want more. If you want more people, then build a $200 million development. You can’t get that. So you really should talk to a professional developer who knows what is possible, what is economically viable. At least that is from the commercial point of view. The other one is the Council social services which is completely different.
Julian Crawford: Thank you. Now we are out of time. I’m very inclined given the flow of conversation, the fact that we have heard from almost everybody who certainly indicated they want to speak, to call time in two minutes. Are people generally agreeable for that? This was an opportunity to share views. It seems to me that we have covered a very wide spectrum of ideas, interests, points of view. We have a great range of stakeholders here. We have a much better collective understanding I think about the process that Council has been following so far, an understanding of where we are up to at present. Can I refer you back to those submission forms and encourage you to put specific individual submissions in, and encourage your friends, families, and anybody else who is interested in having input to put it in. It all counts. You know what they say: a form letter to your politician is worth X, and an individually signed letter is worth Y and a button-holing of the State Member at a function is worth something more. So we all know how to lobby, but I encourage you to do it. This is our collective Springwood, isn’t it, and it is going to work its way through this process. There is still quite a long way to go in the process, and we have heard any number of good ideas, and I know that Council have been capturing that. They will distil the essence down out of that. For my part I think that they have generally done a pretty effective job of filtering. Certainly when I was involved in the invitation Stakeholder workshop in March as an independent facilitator I was very comfortable with the integrity with which Council managed that process of feeding out the output. That report is available and you can go back and read that and it has got a lot of the same issues and points that are being raised here about process, about carts and horses and balancing the economic, social and the environmental. It’s all there. It’s all feeding in ultimately to the councillors. We’ve got about half a dozen of the councillors here. They’ve been listening. We’ve heard specifically from the ward councillors. We have got other councillors here as well listening in and it is all part of that democratic process. So can I round up by thanking all of you for giving up a very large portion of a very valuable Saturday. Can I thank Council staff for the behind the scene work that goes into this stuff, and can be a slightly thankless task. They worked together to pull this together, and ultimately the councillors who represent all of us: ratepayers, stakeholders and so on, particularly thank you back to all of you. I know we started and there was a lot of emotion. There is a lot of emotion inevitably. This is our place, and what happens to it matters intensely to us both personally, our community, our descendants, everybody. And so we want to get this right. We all know too many examples where we haven’t got things right both in this community and other communities around the place. But we have got a great opportunity because of the time and the process here to get it right, and we have heard a number of people commenting on the process. I will leave it, ultimately put it back to you people, to put in some direct individual submissions, be engaged, be active, and let’s all hold out a thought for the Springwood that we all deserve and want to see, and want to be proud of. The next step in the process is Council has got the Options Report on public display until 24 September which is the date to get in these submissions, and then Council is having a meeting at a date that is yet to be confirmed.
Janne Yardy: At this stage it is proposed for 16 October. It will be around that time and then we are proposing to report back with the expressions of interest package which is informed by your submissions on 30 October. So it is a tight schedule but we are very well prepared to deal with it.
Julian Crawford: I officially declare the meeting closed. Thank you very much one and all.
END OF TAPE