Major grant funding for Brewarrina
Some big projects are in the works for Brewarrina Shire, which has secured almost $20 million in funding for a raft of projects, including road infrastructure, upgrading various significant sites around the shire and the all-important upgrade to the CBD area.
Brewarrina Shire Council’s General Manager, David Kirby, said he was excited about the opportunities the funding opened up into the future, in particular re-vamping the original masterplan for the main business area, drawn up more than 20 years ago.
“We have been very lucky to secure $6 million for the redevelopment of the main street, to beautify the area from Doyle Street, Bathurst Street, Bourke and Darling Streets and back to Belmore Street,” Mr Kirby said.
“We are progressing through to the next phase of redeveloping that original masterplan, which was designed in 2000, and some of the themes and concepts of that plan are quite different to what Brewarrina’s needs are today.
“This will be one of the most important Bre projects in the past 30 years, so we are going into the community consultation phase over the next six months.
“We want to complete that as quickly as we can so we can roll that out and get construction happening on the ground.
“As part of that, we want to activate our tourism, we want to enhance the ideas around traditional Aboriginal culture as well as looking at post-colonial culture, to make it more captivating and present it in more detail.
“As we look back at the original concept, things have changed, not only the aesthetics, but things like our council resources, the renewable energy sector and how we present ourselves in terms of climate variation models.
“A lot of the architecture and design will have more cutting-edge ideas and technology to make it a far more sustainable idea than previously presented,” he said.
Building on the growing interest in regional tourism and agri-tourism was also vital for Brewarrina’s economy into the future, Mr Kirby said.
“One of the things lacking is private tourism operating in our small business sector and for us to build on that we need public infrastructure, which won’t just be Bre-centric but will be right across the area.
“There’s been a lot of movement in the agri-tourism sector where there is diversification of agricultural businesses and small family farms are changing so we want to be there to support land owners, including planning laws that may impact those people. […]
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