Foreshore-pathway plans for Bruns parks welcomed

By Luis Feliu

Brunswick Heads residents have welcomed initial talks with the state-appointed trust managers of the town’s three public holiday parks over proposed redevelopment plans which will include a long-fought-for public walkway along the foreshore boundary of each park.

A park walk-through on Tuesday organised by NSW Crown Holiday Parks Trust (NSWCHPT) managers for residents to ask about the concept plans appeared to ease long-running tensions between them over public access along the foreshore, with a guaranteed 10-metre setback between it and all built structures in the parks.

Residents for years claimed the public’s right to walk along the foreshore had been blocked by encroachment of development and activities at The Terrace, Ferry Reserve and Massey Greene holiday parks, outside their operational boundaries.

But the trust’s recently appointed new chief executive, Steve Edmonds, has allayed locals’ fears with his recent public engagement of them.

In turn, Mr Edmonds has been praised by a community group which said he’d faced the community backlash over the adopted 2014 management plans which had been the ‘a poisoned chalice’ for the new CEO.

Foreshore Protection Group member Patricia Warren said that ‘finally, after 20 years’, the 10-metre setback from the top of the riverbank/rock wall at The Terrace and Massey Greene parks would be reimposed, which she said was a legislative requirement ignored in the approved plans of management.

Mrs Grant said that while some contentious issues still remained on how some of boundary areas would be best used, the consultation with residents to date ‘has been the most positive step forward since the late 1990s’.

‘It took the courage of one person to meet the continuing forthright and fearless courage of those community members who have been driving this issue for so long,’ she told Echonetdaily.

‘It will now be up to Mr Edmonds to push this further and ensure that community persons are involved in culling through all feedback and deciding on what further amendments to the plans of management are needed before preparing anything to be put on public exhibition.

‘It has taken  forthright and fearless action by the incoming Mr Edmonds to open up negotiations on potential amendments to the plans of management to include feedback from community members taken as a result of walks through the caravan parks on Tuesday.

‘The package of materials handed to people attending was an exercise towards transparency… organisation and execution of the day was excellent,’ she said.

At The Terrace, the plans provide for the progressive relocation, within five years, of around 12 contentious cabins blocking the foreshore, and widening the public access corridor to provide for a three-metre wide walkway buffered from the park by low hedge-type fencing

The pathway within the corridor is proposed to be built from hail stone with the potential for timber or steel boardwalk sections, viewing platforms and seating. Extensive landscaping is also planned canopy.

Another key proposal for The Terrace is the promise to protect ‘and enhance’ historic World War One cypress pines planted by veterans in the southern section of the park after the great conflict.

Longtime local Darcy O’Meara joined the tour and told the group that practices by previous management had been ‘killing off’ the scores of old trees through ‘stealth’ by severe pruning and other measures to cater for larger motor home tenants of the park.

Under the concept plan, the park will be redesigned with total sites reduced from 198 under the current layout to 160 sites.

Eighteen extra cabins are proposed to be built in the northern precinct.

At Massey-Greene six extra cabins will be built, but the site numbers will be cut from 120 to 97, to help alleviate congestion in Tweed Street. extra public parking also will be built.

At the Ferry Reserve, a row of foreshores sites is planned to be removed to allow for widening of the public access corridor there, with a buffer low vegetated buffer to prevent spillage of camping activities into public space, which had long been a bone of contention and complaints.

Site numbers will stay the same at 133, and seven extra cabins added.

However, Mrs Grant said while it looked like adding extra foreshore land there for the public access corridor was a ‘compromise’, the community was ‘in fact losing half the foreshore’ there, while the caravan park was ‘permitted to expand its commercial activity onto sensitive road reserve land which was only recently acquired by compulsory aquisition’.

‘The former road reserve area was never part of the operational area and certainly never part of the caravan park in the 2005 plan of management because it was a council road.’

She said the trust was now trying to include the former road reserve in its operational area, and Byron Shire Council had given this move in principle support at its meeting just before the September council election.

During the park walk-through this week, Mr Edmonds said there were no plans by the trust to sell off the popular holiday parks to private operators.

He outlined a vision to improve the parks to enhance the family holiday experience while also improving the local environment for the locals at the same time.

He said he would like to see a greener environment for the Bruns Parks, similar to Byron Bay’s Clarkes Beach Holiday Park, one of the trust’s most popular parks, which had extensive tree plantings providing much shade favoured by campers.

That was music to the ears of some on the tour, who commented favourably.

Mr Edmonds said there were several options for redevelopment of the old Pacific Highway land and Fins restaurant building nar the Ferry Reserve which the state government has included in the trust’s operational boundaries.

Demolition and landscaping the area is one option, so is transforming the double-storey brick building near the new motorway bridge into family accommodation units.