AS A RESIDENT of over 42 years, when I arrived the population was around 7000 and now it’s 65,000. The obvious answer is Yes, Hervey Bay is constantly changing.
Growth and economic progress are what sustains our economy, and it needs to continue to sustain our lifestyle. Most residents here are immigrants from other areas around Australia and overseas. Many fall in love with the place at the time of arrival and want to shut the gate behind them and keep paradise the same as the day they arrived but unfortunately, that’s not a reality.
There is much debate about the recent development lodged in Council for a 21-storey building and Council have a big decision to make on this which could alter the course of our future. While I won’t make comments on an active application as I don’t know all the facts of the development to make an informed decision, I will discuss the pros and cons of growth and development.
Firstly, Hervey Bay hasn’t seen a new build of a 6-story high rise for 15 years since the GFC and there is good reason for that. The sale prices and scale of those developments has been unviable in the property market. Things need scale to work, look at all our small hardware stores that have gone over 40 years and replaced by one large $60mil Bunnings, small shopping strips replaced by Stockland, and the new Anaconda stores being built now with many new big box retailers.
For new flights to come to Hervey Bay such as Bonza we need more tourists and frequent users. The additional tourists will require more accommodation alternatives and the modern tourist is demanding a higher standard of accommodation and more things to do during their stay.
We want more restaurants but to have that you need resort style developments with hundreds of tourists to make it viable.
We need more jobs here to keep our youth because we have an aging population and well under the national average weekly income. The Tourism and Retail sector, along with Health and Construction are our biggest employers, so to create better longer-term sustainable jobs we need to build larger complexes that are sustainable to the growth.
For Council rates to steady off we need higher density around our infrastructure as urban sprawl adds enormous costs to Council.
It’s a vicious cycle but it's reality, so before we judge individual developments, we need to understand the longer-term implications of each major decision because they are paradigm shifts that change the course of our future.
with GLEN WINNEY of FCPIA
