Comment sought on airport business park

The proposal will be on exhibition for 28 days from tomorrow November 19 and can be found at www.orange.nsw.gov.au

Initially Council proposed a 300ha business park and following feedback from the community, the department and neighbouring councils the proposed site has been reduced to 114ha, with a yield of approximately 75ha of services lots.

Orange Mayor John Davis OAM said the proposal was an opportunity to make sure Orange continued to provide jobs into the future.

“One of the strengths of the proposal is the colocation of several key drivers for development. These include the area’s natural and man-made attributes, particularly extensive areas of flat land, key infrastructure such as gas and a future water pipeline, regional road connections and rail and air links,” Cr Davis said.

“Council from time to receives requests for larger scale operations that cannot be satisfied within existing zoned land. We need to make sure we are ready when these opportunities arise.”

“We have already heard a lot from the community on this proposal and I urge them to use the exhibition period to voice their opinions about the latest plans.

“We’ve listened to the community and we’re putting forward a smaller business park.”

The zonings in the LEP amendment are IN1 General Industrial and B7 Business Park as well as a buffer or RE1 Public Recreation.

These zonings provide a range of businesses such as:

Depots, transport facilities, general industries, industrial training facilities, timber yards, warehouses, child care centres, neighbourhood shops, office premises, passenger transport facilities and take away food and drink premises.

The five steps in Gateway process are:

1. The planning proposal - the relevant authority prepares the planning

proposal. The relevant authority in this case is Orange City Council.

2. Gateway - the Minister (or delegate) decides whether the planning proposal can

proceed (with or without variation) and subject to other matters including further studies being undertaken, public consultation, public hearings, agency consultation and time frames. A planning proposal does usually not proceed without conditions of this nature. The conditions are then complied with and if necessary, the proposal is changed. A decision on whether the relevant council is able to finalise particular types of LEPs is also determined at this stage.

3. Consultation – Council publicly exhibited as required by the Minister and simultaneously consults with a range of government agencies. A person making a submission may also request a public hearing be held.

4. Assessment - the relevant planning authority reviews public submissions. Parliamentary Counsel then prepares a draft local environmental plan. All submissions are a matter of public record and will be published in conjunction with a the post exhibition report.

5. The making of the LEP - with the Minister’s (or delegate’s) approval the local

environmental plan is published on the NSW legislation website and becomes

law.