One thing no Wollongong citizen would deny - is the fact that we have a major parking problem right in the heart of our entertainment district. Every time there is a crowd attracting performance - and " Disney on Ice " and " Southern Stars " comes to mind, we have a battle between desperate drivers and council rangers. There simply is no parking near the venues and as a result cars cram onto nature strips and attract a bonanza of fines for the council.
The situation is similar whenever a home game is played at Win Stadium. We have concentrated all our entertainment venues in lower Crown street, but we have totally neglected to make any provision for the car parking spaces that will make them viable.
A once in a lifetime opportunity to fix this problem is staring us in the face - and we are letting it slip away.
When Dwyers moved their car dealership from Crown street to North Wollongong the old buildings were demolished to present a virgin site for development. For a time, there was a battle between what was termed the " Gravity " concept and another Keira street retail development. Keira street won - and is now well into the construction stage to virtually double the CBD shopping centre.
That old Dwyer site extends to an entire city block, and it is unusual to find vacant prime land in the centre of a major city. Whatever price it brings now, it will undoubtedly increase steadily in the future. In council hands, it will provide an immediate solution to the entertainment district parking problem - and it will offer a future opportunity to combine a parking station with another commercial venture - which could be a much needed conference centre or a major hotel.
Council recently bought a property for $ 5.2 million in Flinders street, North Wollongong. This site and the Dwyers site are approximately the same distance from the Wollongong Mall, hence if council is looking to Flinders street as it's next parking station it will only serve a single purpose. In contrast, buying and developing the Dwyers site will serve parking for both the Mall and the entertainment district.
Unfortunately, council does not propose to enter a bid for the Dwyers site. As a result, opportunity will slip out of council's hands and this valuable property will be used for another purpose, probably even broken up into a number of freeholds to distribute the development cost structure.
There will be just this one opportunity to solve Wollongong's parking problem. If we let it go - it will be gone forever !
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