Ballina Mayor Sharon Cadwallader is seeking councillors support in today’s meeting (Thursday) that there be ‘no permanent transfer of the Wardell Recreation Grounds for essential housing, until a compensating area of open space is delivered to the community’.
According to construction company https://bennettandbennett.com.au, ‘The NSW state govt selected the Wardell Recreation Ground as the temporary home of those residents of the Cabbage Tree Island community who were heavily flooded in the February/March Floods of 2022 and can’t return home because of the flood damage’.
‘Construction was fast tracked and commenced in June 2022 and was finished in November 2022’.
In a lengthy mayoral minute in Thursday’s agenda, she outlined the history of the rec grounds and how the community rallied together to create it.
She asks that Ballina Council write to relevant NSW ministers to ensure that with the loss of the open space, that a compensating open space comprise ‘comparable clubhouse facilities, or alternatively, a separate site is identified for permanent housing, including provision for an evacuation centre’.
She writes that as Wardell Recreation Grounds is Crown land managed by the government, ‘It is understood that the state government is in the process of confirming that part of the site will remain as housing, resulting in the permanent loss of this open space’.
‘We all support the need for more housing, however if open space is to be allocated to housing, there should be a compensating provision of open space to the community, particularly where is currently no other alternative sports fields available.
‘Council has allocated $20,000 to improve Walsh Park, which will still only provide an informal area for limited activities and this site can in no way replace the formalized open space area that previously existed at the Wardell Recreation Ground, until the construction of the temporary pod village, as per the 2022 flood emergency works’, she adds.
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