Mayor welcomes next step on business park

23 June 2017

Orange Mayor John Davis OAM has welcomed last night’s Orange City Council decision to approve the proposed Airport Business Park. The 22 June council meeting voted 6-3 to approve the proposal which now goes to the NSW Planning Department.

A rescission motion has also been lodged (by Councillors Red Kidd, Ron Gander, Kevin Duffy & Scott Munro) which is set down for a meeting on Tuesday 27 June at 7pm.

“The councilors who have lodged the rescission motion have concerns. They’ll be arguing the case and so will, I because this is an important project,” Cr John Davis said.

“Rather than an industrial park, I prefer to call it the ‘Economic Development and Employment precinct’, which it will be,”

“It was good to hear the views of people who spoke to the meeting last night. As a result of the meeting, I think the objectors have a better idea of where the council is sitting. As a council we won’t support heavy industry, something that is environmentally unfriendly or unsustainable.”

“It’s not Orange versus the country. It’s not people in city areas versus people in rural areas. We’ve brought the proposal from 400 hectares to less than one hundred with buffer zones and we want to see industry out there in the long run that’s acceptable to the whole community.

“We don’t have any DAs before the council for this site. Eventually when a business comes to town and want to puts an industry there, an actual DA would come to council and there’d be room for community comment once again.”

“The meeting heard concerns about cutting up rural land, about the water and about noise. A lot of the rural land around the site has been cut up over the years and some of the people who are objecting are living on land that’s been subdivided.

“Orange City Council has a great record with managing storm water run-off. The water that comes off industrial land and car parks around Orange is remarkably high quality by the time if goes through our stormwater harvesting wetlands, and that’s the kind of thing that will be built near the business park. The run-off might be better quality water than it is now.

“This proposal is all about having the industry to grow jobs for the region, and being able to attract businesses to a new site that is larger than we can currently offer them.

“I’m pleased the airport business park has passed another milestone. This is a fantastic opportunity for jobs creation and growth.

“One of the strengths of the proposal is having a number of key drivers for development right alongside each other. There’s flat land. There’s gas and a future water pipeline. There’s regional road connections and rail and air links.”