An Illawarra Liberal council candidate has outlined her party’s plan to create a new private development company, to take control of commercial projects in Wollongong and Shellharbour in an effort to generate jobs.
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Incumbent Wollongong councillor Michelle Blicavs announced the plan for an “Illawarra Development Corporation”, designed to fast-track up to six development projects across the two cities each year.
“It would be an entity that the two councils would set up and operate, [similar to how] the council operates the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre or Destination Wollongong – which is wholly owned by council but has a separate board,” Cr Blicavs said.
She noted there had been a Hunter Development Corporation operating in Newcastle since 2007.
“I hear stories regularly [through the council] where we have investors come down and look at setting up in Wollongong, but we take so long to get a development through or get any sort of land rezoning that we lose them to other areas,” she said.
Cr Blicavs – who is second on the Liberal ticket for Wollongong’s central suburbs – said the creation of the corporation would form one of her first orders of business if she was re-elected on September 9.
“I would move it as one of my first notices of motion, for the terms of reference and what it would look like,” she said. “Discussions would then have to happen with both councils.”
Cr Blicavs said the two councils would need to provide “seed” funding for the corporation, but that ideally it would become self-sufficient or privately funded after an initially period.
Projects would be referred by the councils based on their capital investment value and ability to create jobs, she said.
“One example might be the Langs Corner project [a plan lodged earlier this year to build a multi-storey office block at the bottom of Crown Street Mall],” she said.
“This is commercial, and it’s job creation. So we’re not talking about residential sites, we’re talking about projects that would create jobs – because the private sector doesn’t need help building apartments.”
She also said the Skydive the Beach headquarters, which were approved for Stuart Park after years of delays and legal challenges, could have been assessed by the corporation instead of the council.
Quizzed on how she would prevent developers having undue influence, Cr Blicavs said she thought “Wollongong has learned from the mistakes of the past”.
“Developers are not evil,” she said. “They are people who have creative ideas and they want to create jobs in this city.”
Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
