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Jindabyne Chamber of Commerce

Response and submission to

Snowy Mountains Special Activation Precinct

Draft Master Plan

Background

The Jindabyne Chamber of Commerce is the lead business organisation representing the interests of local businesses. The membership is represented by a broad section of the community. The Chamber has a tourism focused online presence ‘Destination Jindabyne’ whose purpose is to generate increased opportunities within Jindabyne. The Chamber’s lobbying is at the heart of the Go Jindabyne Project and has been supportive of the subsequent SAP Master Plan.

The Chamber Executive is made up of local business people and has a good diversity of ages, gender, business experience and time spent in the community.

This submission is completed on behalf of the Chamber and represents the views of the executive as whole. Individual member businesses have been encouraged to contribute to the entire process and have been asked to make individual and specific submissions based on their experiences.

The Chamber fundamentally supports the objectives of the SAP, that being to broaden the seasonality periods to which tourism provides economic prosperity to the region. We are supportive of the long term vision and the investment to be made by the NSW State Government.

In our support we believe it not overly critical in making comments that the master plan lacks the articulation of a vision. We believe that there needs to be a powerful ‘catch all’ description of what Jindabyne and the Snowy Mountains would represent moving forward.

This vision should include a growing active full-time population, a pristine high altitude tourism location rich in adventure, arts and culture, heritage (indigenous and western), and of course climate change.

Specific comments on important elements of the draft Master Plan:

1. The Southern Connector

The Chamber fully supports the concept of a reconnected foreshore. This reconnection has the ability of allowing the construction of a main street and civic centre. We understand the importance of creating the road, to expose more land opportunities, and certainly understand the importance of direct access for the new school precinct. What we have difficulties understanding, is the plan’s desire to only have one lane each way on both the connector road as well as Kosciusko Road. In the past we have submitted the idea of land bridges to make the connection. We believe that the connector road is financially supportive as a catalyst project, and should be designed with two lanes or an over generous allotment of width, to allow for turns into future developments. At the same time we submit not to reduce the width of the Kosciuszko Road, but to have timed allocation for parking (i.e. clearway), cycle ways, bus transit lanes etc. We believe strongly in not reducing the two lanes into one.

2. Parking

Parking space helps drive commercial success. The Chamber is concerned by the lack of parking mentioned in the plan. It is understood that it may well appear in the delivery plan, however the Chamber believes strongly that there is the need for substantially more parking opportunities along the different nodes (foreshore, shopping, tourism areas, park and ride). Further, it’s the belief of Chamber that parking will remain at the forefront of residential growth. Cars, being the preferred Australian choice for transport, will remain so for the SAP time horizon. Fuel source and size may change, by personal transport concept. As to the size, we see larger cars on Australian roads as well as caravans and motorhomes. These must be catered for in any delivery plan.

Associated with parking are intelligent signs that point drivers to available parking spots. This technology may also be used to provide information to parking at Bullocks Flat, Perisher and Thredbo. This sort of information may also assist the public in making decisions to use public transport.

3. Tourism Specific Attractions

The specific purpose of increasing the tourism demand on the Snowy Mountains away from winter, is to provide a year round destination that will need to have added capacity for additional tourism activities. In this regard, the Chamber fully supports the proposed Mountain Bike Park and marvels at the possibilities of the Gondola idea. However we have equal weighting to the ideas for an:

· Indoor Entertainment Facility.

· Arts and Culture Tourism and Alpine Heritage Centre.

· Lake specific Tourism venture including Boating services.

The Chamber believes that a sustainable Jindabyne is one that offers more than an accommodation base for mountain activities. Hence, the Chamber fully endorses any project that brings Tourism into the area in off winter times.

4. Growth vs Catalyst focus

The Chamber supports the premise behind the activation of the western foreshore, however splitting the SAP into Growth and Catalyst seems counter intuitive. Why is the West a catalyst and not the East? Our rationale is that the east is ready for development now whereas the land to the west may be some years away from development.

We understand the need for the council to resume governance of large parts of Jindabyne though we would think it more pragmatic to define growth and catalyst in terms of activity rather than geography. Case in point is the land sold by Snowy Hydro. These parcels of land are strategic in location and should be seen as potential catalyst projects. Is it not possible for the catalyst project to be deemed commercial in nature (tourism accommodation, eco resorts, arts and cultural attractions, golf course, retail etc) and growth to be residential and repurposing?

Despite the focus we do support the rezoning of the western foreshore for commercial activities such as eco resorts and other attractions, with the proviso that the accommodation split is conserved to ensure seasonal workers and staff are accommodated into the mix.

5. Lake Foreshore

Without doubt a signature project for Jindabyne. The project to complete the re-connection to the foreshore, allowing for public space to enjoy the lake at various water levels, plus the ability to facilitate an additional Commercial precinct, potentially linked with other parts of the lake community via boat, is truly exciting. Our two concerns would be to ensure public space remains a public space without encroachment of commercial activity plus that the visual impact of any commercial development is in keeping with the nature of the lake. A square glass filled 6 storey building is not the ideal to strive for.

In that regard we again understand that the delivery plan will outline some of the permissible design attributes such a colour, height and ascetics, though we believe they are integral with the master plan that they should have been included.