Tweed Shire Council has awarded licences to operate three commercial shopfront spaces at the historical Murwillumbah Railway Station, at the head of the Tweed section of the Northern Rivers Rail Trail.
Councillors unanimously supported a recommendation to award the licences following a robust and competitive expression of interest and open tender process toward the end of last year.
A total of 8 bids were received across the three outlets, plus one additional bid lodged for the Ground Precinct area at the station.
Following a stringent process, the evaluation panel recommended three businesses be awarded a contract to operate the respective commercial shopfront spaces. At the Council meeting on 13 December, Council resolved to proceed with offering licences to the following businesses:
- Shop 1 bike hire outlet – Better by Bike AU Pty Ltd
- Shop 2 café outlet – The Munch Bunch Pty Ltd
- Shop 4 bike hire outlet and tours – Cheeky Racing Pty Ltd
Fit out and installation of the retail outlets is expected to commence in early 2024. No licences were awarded for the Ground Precinct. Shop 3 will continue to operate as the Murwillumbah Visitor Information Centre, operated by The Tweed Tourism Company.
Mayor of Tweed Shire Chris Cherry was excited to welcome the new products and experiences to service the Northern Rivers Rail Trail and thanked everyone who participated in the tender process.
“Since its opening in March, the Tweed section of the Northern Rivers Rail Trail has exceeded expectations and has quickly become one of the most popular drawcards for the region,” Cr Cherry said.
“I’m certain the addition and diversity of these trail experiences at the beautiful Murwillumbah Railway Station will add to its popularity even further. It is also great news that these are all Northern Rivers’ businesses which will service the Northern Rivers Rail Trail as it progresses connections to the ultimate 132 km distance in the years to come.
“I would like to thank all businesses that participated in the tendering process. The decision to award the licences was done in a fair, transparent and open tendering process, with the best outcome for the Tweed community at the forefront of the decision-making. These businesses will significantly contribute to the financially sustainable operations of the Northern Rivers Rail Trail.
“We want to acknowledge and thank Murwillumbah Cycles for their contribution to the Murwillumbah Railway Station and as early supporters of the Rail Trail. As one of many bike hire companies that service the NRRT at locations adjacent to the Rail Trail, we wish them every success at their Mooball location.”
Further opportunity exists for businesses to partner with the Northern Rivers Rail Trail through its Connect Program.
Launched in September, the program enables business partners to highlight their guest experience offerings, focusing on the ways users can taste, stay, move, explore and enjoy along the Rail Trail. To find out more and to join the Connect Program, visit the Northern Rivers Rail Trail website.
Background:
More information on the licences and tendering process is detailed in the Council Reportconsidered by Councillors on 13 December 2023 and published on Council’s website at tweed.nsw.gov.au/council-meetings
Good to see fresh businesses in Murwillumbah, thanks TSC. Income will be welcome to support the trail.
I recently wrote a letter to the state government about the rail between casino and Murwillumbah for reopen, obviously they chose to ignore my letter . Sydney is obviously preferred choice .I know that Labor won’t get my vote at the next election .no party will get my vote because they choose to ignore people like myself to express opinion.
A whole decade ago, the democratically elected State government and opposition agreed that train services would not be returned to the old corridor. In October 2020, both sides of parliament further agreed to close two sections of the corridor and allow a trail to be built in place of the rails. Completing the whole Northern Rivers Rail Trail is now an explicit goal of the government’s transport policy.
While you certainly have a right to express yourself, you should not expect the government to automatically concur with your opinions, especially those that are shared only by a small but noisy minority. In fact, your decision to complain indicates that you are choosing to ignore a decision they have been elected to make.
Eighty-five percent of the NSW population lives in the region in and around Sydney where trains normally carry a million passengers every day. Anyone who wants hundreds of millions of dollars spent providing expensive railway services between a few small towns for the benefit of a tiny minority needs to have a close look at their own grossly inflated sense of entitlement.
Nobody cares how you vote. If you don’t want to vote at all or want to direct it to someone irrelevant, then go right ahead.
Yes Peter, thousands of local people have been writing letters, signing petitions and attending protest rallies for twenty years calling for train services. all have been ignored by their well-paid political REPRESENTATIVES who are supposed to provide infrastructure, not waste millions of taxpayers’ money destroying it. (all those petitions and rallies have been well documented) Train services are not just for the local population but also for over 5.2 million visitors per year-almost the population of Sydney- to the three local government areas along the train line. These visitors are creating traffic chaos in our tiny towns and locals are not happy.
Politicians have NEVER said trains would never return to the line. They actually keep saying that the bike track is saving the rail corridor for trains. NO IT ISN”T. Despite local politicians and the state opposition promising for many years that they would provide a commuter train service on the Casino to Murwillumbah line as the community would need “more trains and more tourists trains and the line needed to be connected to the Qld rail system at Coolangatta” (also well documented) the minute they looked like being elected those promises disappeared. That’s how “democratically elected” people behave. Voters know they can’t be trusted that’s why their votes are going through the floor.
Not only is the free bike track costing as much as it did to repair the line in Byron for trains, which people pay to use, those using the free bike track drive to it in their huge gas guzzlers with their bikes on the back, increasing traffic in towns, not reducing it .
Just what we need in the middle of a climate crisis with floods and fires destroying the country and the planet and making the towns unpleasant places for locals and millions of visitors.
The rail trail is saving the corridor in public ownership. The Minister for Transport can take it back for any transport related purpose with the stroke of a pen. Both sides of parliament agreed in 2020 to close almost a third of the railway and allow the removal of the tracks to build a trail. That is tantamount to them agreeing that trains would never return to those tracks.
Nobody is going to fork out the hundreds of millions of dollars required to resurrect the old railway.
Nobody in government or opposition at any level, not even one of the currently elected parliamentarians, has been promising trains for this region. .They are promising to build a trail. That is explicit government policy. Almost one third of the trail has already been built and plans are well underway for the rest of it.
Louise has a definite tendency toward pointless hyperbole with cars only known as ‘gas-guzzlers’. I drive past the Murwillumbah Station every morning. Most of the cars are just ordinary sedans. I also usually pass several people riding their bikes to the trail.