The recent announcement of a second government office block being built on the former Gosford Public School site signals the absolute failure of the CCRDC intervention to make Gosford a State Signifi cant site.
From their first concept design, they disregarded their responsibility to implement the outcome of the Gosford Challenge and Our City Our Destiny, as an agent at arm’s length from the State. Ministers for Planning, at fi rst under the Labor Government then the Liberal Government, ignored the promise used to get the school off their site, that the community would have a Performing Arts Centre (PAC).
Worse still, on trying to accommodate the PAC somewhere else so that the Government could make maximum profi t in selling off the school site, they determined to move the PAC to the crown land heritage listed parks reserved for public recreation. That is the 1887 Town Park, now our War Memorial Park, and Poppy Park, the latter built by rotary and Apex, on land resumed from the waterfront, and specifi cally instructed by Gosford Council to restore and enhance the direct relationship of the War Memorial Park with the broadwater.
This was a condition of construction of which Adam Crouch is apparently ignorant. The CCRDC senior executive has left and the advisory board has not been replaced following a review of the CCRDC, and the minister has now placed the planning of this sale back with the minister responsible for selling off government real estate. The CCRDC was charged with widespread consultation with the public, yet they never held a single open public meeting, preferring instead to create a semblance of consultation by talking to select interest groups which they felt they could gain support from for their developer-oriented proposal to sell off all crown and public land on the waterfront.
They created no integrated planning and did no feasibility studies on the buildings they imaged in their plans. Rather, they stated that these were only concept designs and the developers who bought the land would best know what to build on the sites they purchased. They even distorted the heritage review they were required to obtain by telling the heritage consultants they were not allowed to look at any primary documents in their research. They met once with heritage representatives at the instruction of the minister as we tried to raise concerns, then told us we were “too diffuse” a group with which to maintain regular consultations.
They ignored advice from both the heritage community regarding destruction of our two heritage parks, simply because they had no other alternative for the PAC displaced from the school site due to avarice. Money and developer sales were the driving force for their proposals, notwithstanding the huge objections when they were exhibited for public comment (more than 670 objections to the fi rst proposal with six for and two undecided). The community has never accepted their distortion of the promises for a PAC if the school moved off the site, and now their two planning proposals intend to destroy our War Memorial and Poppy Parks by relocating the PAC.
Notwithstanding this absence of community consent, Brad Hazzard determined in the second proposal (the Landing Stage One) to continue the government land grab for all crown land reserved for public recreation on the waterfront, and ignored the covenant with the community that despite two public parliamentary petitions, each of more than 10,000 signatures against removal of the public school, they would disregard any attempt to deny these promises, which were the outcome of the Gosford Challenge consultation and entrenched The Our City Our Destiny Plan (a joint Gosford Council and State Government Blueprint that followed).
The two parliamentary petitions were presented by MP Chris Holstein, and at the same time disparaged by him as “bananas’ with a minority view. Holstein had earlier at Gosford Council handed over control of the Waterfront to State Government for rezoning for development as a State Signifi cant Site. The government arrogantly assumed they would simply drop their promise of a PAC on the site instead, but the community has never accepted the rejection of this covenant. Questions need to be answered about why these anti-community pro developer positions were taken up, first by the Labor government against the background of the Obeid related scandals, then the Federal developer contributions channelled into NSW Government.
We must ask why Adam Crouch and Liberal ministers have still not advised the community that the ‘concept design’ they are insisting on for the Poppy Park involves turning the War Memorial Park into an entranceway for the PAC, including a cycleway through the Park and cutting away the surface of the original cliff face. The PAC will rise up to cut off the water views of not only the Cenotaph and Boer War Memorials but also the historical Blacket Church opposite. Because the distorted heritage review of the park only identifi ed two ‘main’ monuments on the park, ignoring the 10 others, we are not advised as a community that our only three specific WWI memorials: to Harry Newhouse and all Gallipoli veterans, the Lone Pine Monument and the monument to Sister Sumner (our only women’s memorial in the park, erected by the CWA) will all be removed.
This is unthinkable desecration at the time we commemorate our WWI volunteers who died for our country and demonstrates just how far our government is prepared to go to put profi ts and developer sales ahead of community interests. For these reasons, community heritage and infrastructure feasibility, Gosford Council announced as trustee of these two parks, that the PAC could not be built on the Poppy Park. Adam Crouch and the Liberals this week returned to demand that the PAC be built on Poppy Park, still failing to let the community know of the planned effect on the War Memorial Park. Crouch has even tried to argue that Poppy Park has only existed for a year.
Email, Apr 8, 2016 Kay Williams, Pearl Beach