DEAR News Of The Area,

IN response to Gerry McGilvray “Show us the costings” (Coffs Coast NOTA 19 November 2024).

All of a sudden the anti-development activists are concerned with pesky details like accurate costings.

Where were these concerns when the former council majority hastily created their own uncosted and laughably amateurish masterplan?

Where were these concerns for financial responsibility when the former council systematically stripped funding from vital community services to create the illusion of a surplus so it could try to buy land already owned by the public in order to stop development?

Properly redeveloping the foreshores will require a lot of money.

No matter the final masterplan, all major services to the foreshores need to be substantially upgraded – power, water, sewer, and stormwater.

Those upgrades will likely cost well into the tens of millions, just to create the proper blank canvas for the redevelopment.

Once the services are upgraded, almost all the road needs to be replaced and many hundreds of new parking spaces must be created.

Even if you ignore the residential and tourist accommodation, the masterplan still includes multiple new amenities blocks, public buildings, meeting spaces, major outdoor spaces, a bridge over the railway line, retail and hospitality tenancies, new boardwalks, regionally iconic play spaces, and Indigenous cultural facilities.

There is no chance all of that can be built properly for the $15 million McGilvray suggests.

But that’s the point. The anti-development activists don’t actually want anything done at the foreshores.

Let’s not accept doing this on the cheap.

We’ve waited much too long. It’s got to be done properly.

Do it once, and do it right.

Regards,
Jesse YOUNG,
Coffs Harbour.