Things do not look good for Wollongong's troubled Fraternity club. It has a huge debt at an impossible interest rate, infighting at board level - and it's most valuable asset has been downgraded by a council decision.
Fifty years ago the Wollongong Italian community built this club as a place to preserve the Italian way of life. It served good Italian food, played peculiar Italian sporting games - and was a congenial meeting place where people of Italian background could entertain their Australian friends.
The club prospered and over time bought out neighbouring houses to create one of the biggest club car parks in this state - but things went downhill from there. An ambitious expansion plan saw cost overruns and inflation create an unfinished building programme and unsustainable debt.
There have been several remedial plans, all frustrated by an inability to create a board with financial skills. Elements within the club wish to preserve a culture incompatible with the management stresses of a modern club - and there is now a chance that it will go out of existence.
The saving grace could have been the huge amount of car space right alongside a fast developing shopping precinct. There were offers to buy this and lease some back to the club - while development on other sections would ensure viability.
This was scuttled when Wollongong council declared it flood prone land - and indicated that building approval would be refused.
It seems strange that just a few hundred yards away - on perfectly flat land - there is a huge new shopping centre with underground parking nearly completion.
If the club car park is flood prone, what will happen to that new complex and it's underground car park should a deluge occur ?
There may be politics at work in this scenario. Customer parking will be a big issue when the Fairy Meadow shopping expansion is complete. The Fraternity club car park will have little value if it is denied development, but it would solve a lot of problems if it could be cheaply acquired to provide car parking for the expanding shopping centre.
This seems to be a complicated chess board - where a lot of competing interests are in play !
Geoff, the decision to allow the shopping centre on the corner of Princes Highway and Elliotts Rd Fairymeadow was made by the previous [sacked, corrupt' Council and under an old Local Environment Plan that permitted it. A few things have happened since then! For one Wollongong City Council were sacked for corruption and the LEP has been updated and rewritten to take into account the very real issue of flooding in this locality. The Frat is located next to [and I mean right beside] Fairy Creek. A lot of mediation and flood mitigation work has been done after the dreadful damage from the 1998 floods, but the fact remains it is a highly flood prone area. I was living in Elliotts Rd the night of the August 1998 floods. I was actually in Elliotts Rd and Princes Higway at Fairymeadow just before the flood was peaking at around 7pm. Fairy Creek had spilled out as its banks could not hold the swell of water. At the time I escaped from Princes Highway I had to wade to my car [left on higher ground] in swirling, freezing water than came up to my crotch! This was on the corner of Princes Highway and Elliotts Rd. The water rose even higher after 7pm till it peaked around midnight. All of Campus east student accommodation ground floor was totally flooded with hundreds of thousands in damage. It does not have underground structures like car parks either. I usually agree with you on most matters Geoff but the fact that a previous, corrupt council using an out of date LEP approved the building of this shopping centre - clearly a planning disaster waiting to happen when the next flood occurs - is not reason to for the Council to approve an even more dangeorus Development application [because it is a block closeer to the source of the flood water ie., the Fairy Creek] for the Frat car park. How the shopping centre being built will ever be able to obtain flood insurance is beyond me. I consider it uninsurable.
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