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Public information sessions and a public hearing on Thursday, March 30, are an opportunity to let the Central Coast Council know how residents and ratepayers feel about the latest proposals for the city centre and waterfront.
By Jacquelene Pearson
CC Council has just announced that it wants to engage with the community to talk about Gosford’s future, one more time.
Gosford is the capital of the Central Coast according to multiple regional plans and NSW Government documents, even if it looks like a decaying and depressing town centre in deep decline with a few new buildings and an expensive park on its fringes.
CEO, David Farmer, said that during the consultation on the latest proposal to develop Gosford waterfront “council received an overwhelming response from the community asking about the future development of Gosford.
“Gosford [is] set to become the geographic centre of Australia’s first global city region, a region where six cities come together to become a world-leading place for education, employment and community,” Mr Farmer said, referring to the Greater Cities Commission’s Six Cities Strategy.
“Several major government and non-government projects proposed to revitalise Gosford city are approved or are working their way through the planning process,” he said.
“As identified by the [former] NSW Government, Gosford is the chosen city for the proposed new university and TAFE campuses, upgrades to the stadium, development of the regional library, and the NSW Government’s faster train proposal.”
Council will host drop-in information sessions on Thursday 30 March at Parkhouse Gosford (the old Lebanese restaurant in Kibble Park, 124 Donnison St) to get the conversation rolling. Two separate sessions will be held for community and businesses.
The first session, which Administrator Hart said he will attend, is for “businesses and collaborators” from 10am to 12pm. The broader community has been allocated from 1pm to 4pm for their drop-in session.
The council has placed a mix of topics in front of the community under its ‘Let’s Talk Gosford’ banner. Here are the matters that specifically relate to Gosford along with a summary of what CC Council wants to happen:
- Kibble Park Place Plan – council reckons the park “needs a refresh to make it a safe, welcoming and vibrant park that we can all be proud of. Council commenced consultation on the revitalisation of the park in 2020, and now that we have refined the design, we want to hear if we’ve got it right.”
- Reclassification of Council-owned land at 73-75 Mann St Gosford – council is holding a public hearing into the reclassification of Council-owned land from ‘Community’ to ‘Operational’ at 73-75 Mann St Gosford in accordance with the Local Government Act 1993. Council reckons “this is required to support development of a new TAFE campus on the site.”
- Gosford waterfront revitalisation – council reckons “this project will propel the city to a new status – presenting a world-class destination with outstanding health, education, entertainment and lifestyle facilities with opportunities for businesses, visitors and the community.”
- Gosford Regional Library – council reckons “the vision for the new Regional Library in Gosford is to create an iconic building in the heart of Gosford CBD, where our community can connect, create and collaborate.”
- Water and sewer projects – council reckons “these projects will set the foundations to support Gosford’s entry to becoming an iconic waterfront city and will allow for increased capacity across the water and sewer network.”
Four other projects, not directly or specifically connected to the future of Gosford city and waterfront, have been bundled in with the five listed above. They are a Central Coast Street Design Manual, the draft Central Coast Local Housing Strategy, Safer Cities Her Way and the Coastal Management Program Hawkesbury Nepean River including Brisbane Water.
Each of those four issues would be worthy of its own “Let’s talk” fest and The Point will consider them in other articles.
Let’s now look at each of the five major Gosford-related issues on the table and see if the council’s current vision aligns with the needs of the community.
1. Another makeover for Kibble Park
The Lederer Group offered to give Kibble Park a facelift as part of its Gosford Alive masterplan for the former Market Town/Kibbleplex site between 2016 and 2018. The community was concerned this was a handover of the public park to a private developer. Lederer recently offloaded both the Imperial Centre and the Kibbleplex site and the intentions of the new owner of Kibbleplex are unclear.
Lee Shearer was appointed coordinator general of Gosford in 2018 by then Planning Minister Anthony Roberts. She engaged the NSW Government Architect who described Kibble Park as the heart of Gosford. In recent years Kibble Park has lost its fountain which was declared a drowning risk. The sculpture integrated into the fountain was, at one stage, to be moved to a park at the Narara end of Showground Road but that plan was abandoned. There doesn’t appear to be any money allocated in the council’s draft operational plan for 2023-24.
The latest Kibble Park Place Plan is on exhibition until April 26 and there are virtual project presentations on April 6.
2. Community land selloff
The deadline has passed to make submissions on CC Council’s proposal to reclassify 73 and 75 Mann St from community to operational so it can be sold. Council is, however, obliged to hold a public hearing as part of the process to reclassify the land.
The public hearing is scheduled for March 30 from 5pm-7pm at Central Coast Stadium (14 Dane Dr, Gosford) in the corporate marquee located on the ground floor of the Western side of the stadium.
This Mann St land was purchased to form part of a proposed Creative Arts Precinct in Mann St between Donnison St and the council building. The former councillors got cold feet about the project in 2019 when council staff drastically inflated the costs to construct the performing arts precinct.
Although classified as community land, it was not included in the council’s recent consultation about a new plan of management for CC Council’s community land. Council has been negotiating to sell the land, along with Gosford Council chambers and the former Broadwater Hotel in Mann St, to NSW TAFE and Landcom.
A proposal was announced in 2021 to transfer the current TAFE campus to Mann St and use the existing TAFE land for affordable housing. This is not a policy that NSW Labor took to last Saturday’s election so the future of the deal is uncertain.
David Farmer has said that if the TAFE and Landcom deals don’t come to fruition this prime Gosford real estate will be sold to a private developer. These properties were included in the controversial Tranche 1 of the CC Council’s asset selloff program in November 2020.
At that time the Interim Administrator Dick Persson had committed not to sell any community land and, yet, residents discovered Tranche 1 included two lots of community land in Mann St. This is the community land that CC Council attempted to find a ‘back door’ via the Local Planning Panel to reclassify without community consultation.
Both Rik Hart and David Farmer have given CC Council a clean bill of financial health so there is no need to continue selling community assets. If residents don’t attend the hearing it will be taken as a sign that the community doesn’t care about the further selloff of its public land.
Two community groups have opposed the reclassification and selloff of land in Mann St. Chair of FoPAP, Barney Waters, said the council’s attempt to sell public land in Mann St without committing to a location or plan to deliver a performing arts centre or precinct was “out of line”.
“We have an administrator who was appointed to fix a liquidity crisis and he says he has done that job,” Waters said. “What right does he have to determine the future of the region’s capital city?”
Mr Waters said the Central Coast Council’s announcement that it was time to “once again talk about Gosford is an insult to our community’s intelligence.
“We have been through Our City Our Destiny in 2010. Then the waterfront was rezoned without proper consultation. Then we were promised a performing arts centre on the site of the Gosford Primary School. That’s now the location of the tax office, state government building and the Central Coast Quarter.
“Where is the community’s dividend? Where is our performing arts centre?
“Then we had a coordinator general, the government architect and a special environmental planning policy. We were then promised a performing arts precinct in Mann St. Now that land is going to be sold off and we don’t even have elected councillors.
“Now an administrator is trying to get the public to talk about Gosford again. Well we all need to turn up to the Parkhouse in Kibble Park on March 30 and let the council know what we want – a commitment to stop selling off public land in Gosford and a firm commitment to a site, timeframe and budget to build a performing arts centre.”
3. The waterfront
Joseph Halwagy, chair of the Gosford Waterfront Alliance, said he did not believe the council’s conclusions from its Gosford waterfront consultation.
“The council’s numbers don’t add up. They are claiming the public feedback from the waterfront consultation was overwhelmingly positive and that is just not true. Now they are trying to sell land that is classified as community land at 73 and 75 Mann St, and that is unlawful.
“They want to flog off the Gosford council chamber building, the Broadwater Hotel site, and the community lots but the newly-elected NSW Government is not likely to buy it. Will this be another deal between the council and another of its developer mates to sell prime land in Mann St and privatise the waterfront?
“What is in this for the community? We get a redesigned Kibble Park and that is not good enough,” Mr Halwagy said.
The newly-elected Minns Labor Government in NSW has committed to fund over $8 million in studies to progress CC Council’s latest vision for the waterfront. At the February council meeting Mr Hart said he thought that would pay for the traffic studies and some of the environmental studies.
Those studies would enable the council to advance a business case for their waterfront vision. It would then require a major capital injection from the NSW Government and private developers for any new development to take place.
4. Regional library
This is the only community-minded project in Gosford that appears to be moving ahead and it has been a very long time coming. There’s $21.4 million in CC Council’s draft operational plan for 2023-24 to build the new regional library in Donnison St, across the road from the existing library.
Rik Hart told the March council meeting that the construction of the library would still be finished in late 2024 even though a contractor has not yet been selected.
5. Water and sewer projects
Council has nine water and sewer upgrade packages planned for Gosford over the coming years and these have been in the works since the Coordinator General came to town to transform the CBD in 2018.
The need for water and sewer upgrades in the Gosford CBD have been debated since at least the final terms of the former Gosford City Council. They will mainly benefit the ‘key sites’ or huge developments made possible when development in the Gosford CBD was placed under a State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP) in 2018.
The direct benefit to the community from this expenditure is unclear.
What you can do
We all want the Gossy Good Times(!) to get rolling. We all want to see Gosford vibrant but most residents also want to see it developed in ways that are sustainable. The flood-prone waterfront needs to be made ready for sea level rise particularly as it appears temperature increases will not be kept to 1.5 degrees this century.
The best thing you can do is make sure you have your say. If possible, go to one of the drop in sessions on Thursday and make it to the public hearing. Until an elected council is in place in September 2024 it is up to residents and ratepayers to engage with council and have their voices heard.
Let’s Talk Gosford! Find out more and have your say online at yourvoiceourcoast.com/gosford
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