This city needs to get serious about our activation on the Wollongong foreshore.
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There is a current debate about a proposal to put a commercial bistro and balcony at the North Wollongong Surf Club.
That is being threatened on heritage grounds. Yet it is exactly what the surf club and the city needs.
There are things here which are completely illogical which seemingly go without being challenged and it speaks volumes to our past history.
It seems the skeletons of the past prohibit our potential growth for the future. Take this example.
What is the logical reason this city MUST have a bus parking bay and rest area in one of the best damn locations in the entire city?
The bus area is located directly behind City Beach for those who don't know.
Prime real estate. It's beyond fathomable.
We drive ourselves absolutely insane talking endlessly about foreshore parking and access and yet here we have this great big barrier in the middle of it which no-one seems willing to touch in fear of upsetting the bus drivers, or perhaps more pointedly their union.
I've heard it suggested in the town that there are people who declare that if the bus parking area were to be removed it would be over our dead bodies.
A bold statement indeed because there is plenty of strong reasoning as to why that area could be better utilised.
Undoubtedly a boffin in an office will now email with a 10-page document on why it has to be there or why it can't be moved, but I'll save you the email boffin, don't bother. It won't get read cause it's complete tosh.
There is one simple regulation we should start living by when it comes to the future planning of this city and I doubt it's in any planning manuals. The law of common sense.
Let's start using common sense as our one definitive guide for planning the future of our wonderful city and dismissing the rest as pure white noise.
We can start be addressing things that have been put in the "too hard basket" for too long.
If we are to truly call ourselves the City of Innovation, we need to take the words "no" and "can't" from our vocabulary.
