Update

To gauge the community’s and user group’s thoughts, suggestions and general reaction to the draft Master Plan, Council prepared and delivered a city-wide community engagement. An Open Day was also held at the Glenunga Reserve in November 2012.

The overarching summary of the responses were:

• In general the Community Hub facility gained strong support for development in accordance with the options presented by Council;
• Of those responses, matters of concern were primarily the overall cost of the project and the potential visual impact on the landscape.

Based on the community feedback, Council revised the Concept Master Plan in terms of reducing the scale and cost, minimising the building floor plan and impact on the landscape and removing proposed services that were not deemed necessary (café, gym facilities and traffic calming measures on L’Estrange Street). This revised Master Plan was available for further community engagement with the results considered by Council in July 2013.

Council endorsed the development of the entire Community Hub facility, as one project (rather than staged) and that the building design be a low level, one storey facility, that is designed in sympathy to its parkland setting.

Among both telephone and feedback from respondents there were three key elements of the draft Master Plan which received relatively strong support.\

The three key elements include:

• Building new clubrooms and improving sporting fields to cater for existing sporting groups;
• Building a new community centre for multi-purpose community use for all age groups, from young people to senior citizens;
• Improving recreational and visual amenity of the reserve with new picnic and BBQ facilities, access paths, public toilets, lighting and car parking.

The revised Glenunga Reserve Community Hub Project Plan was endorsed at the Council Meeting, held 23 July 2014. The vision is for a centralised ‘all-in-one’ facility at the site; that can act as a true community hub.