As a community we have been waiting for over twelve months for a sign of activity from the NRRC, now the NSWRA (Reconstruction Authority) regarding the Resilient Lands Program. "It is coming" has been the commonly heard phrase.

Tomorrow night's Lismore City Council (LCC) meeting looks to break the ice if councillors approve a Planning Proposal to rezone land at 1055 and 1055A Bruxner Highway in Goonellabah.

For those that travel along the newly opened Oliver Avenue extension, the proposed land is on the right-hand side heading towards the highway. If you travel along the Bruxner, it will be on your right-hand side just after the Pineapple Road roundabout.

If approved, the proposal is expected to deliver 350 residential lots and 150 industrial/commercial lots from the 75 hectares. The landowners submitted a preliminary offer of intent for a Voluntary Planning Agreement that offers:

1. 15 serviced lots at cost price to the NSW RA,

2. 3,000sqm of serviced land at cost price to a registered Community Housing Provider for affordable housing, and

3. Land along the Tucki Tucki Creek corridor to be revegetated, development with a shared path and dedicated to Lismore City Council after five years.

On paper, that looks to be 15 lots for flood-affected households. This is yet to be confirmed. Plus a substantial parcel of land for affordable housing.

The land will be split into four components with residential (light pink in the diagram above) at the top with a minimum size of 400 sqm blocks, closest to the Bruxner Highway, and surrounded by a Village Centre (light blue).

Below that a mixed-use parcel in the middle (dark pink) with a 300 sqm minimum block size and a 13m building height indicating more townhouses and units. Below that this is a riparian restoration open space of Tucki Tucki Creek in light green.

The orange section indicates the Business mixed-use parcel of land with 300 sqm minimum size block and the purple at the bottom is for industrial land with a minimum block size of 1,500 sqm.

Access to the new precinct will be via Oliver Avenue.

Slopes vary on the site but are generally in the order of 7 – 15% with some localised areas being in the order of 26%.

While the planning proposal looks and sounds like an easy sign-off for councillors, the process is more complex thanks to the Local Environmental Plan (LEP) which has not been updated since 2012.

The northern part of the site is identified in Lismore’s adopted growth strategy, the Growth and Realignment Strategy, 2022 (GRS) as being potentially suitable for future residential use, including medium-density residential and the incorporation of some commercial areas and a live/work precinct. The southern part of the site is identified in the GRS as being potentially suitable as part of an expansion of the Goonellabah industrial precinct.

The land is currently used for grazing and is mapped as State Significant Farmland. The site hosts some dilapidated dwellings and a scattering of mature paddock trees. The Tucki Tucki Creek, and its tributaries, runs from west to east across the site. The subject land is currently zoned RU1 Primary Production. To the east, there is a working macadamia farm.

The planning proposal is looking to amend the Lismore LEP 2012 to enable residential, mixed-use and industrial land to meet the needs of the Lismore community. The intended outcome of this Planning Proposal is to rezone the site to a combination of R1 General Residential, MU1 Mixed-Use, E4 General Industrial and RE1 Public Recreation.

A strip of land at the northern end of the site, fronting the Bruxner Highway, is not proposed to be rezoned. This is to secure land for Transport for NSW for future realignment of the Bruxner Highway.

This DCP chapter is still a work in progress. It is expected to be reported to Council early in 2024. The process for approving and publishing a DCP differs from a Planning Proposal in that it goes through only three formal stages:

• Resolution from councillors to proceed to public exhibition,

• A period of public exhibition,

• Final resolution from councillors to adopt and publish the new chapter.

You can watch a live stream of the LCC meeting tomorrow night at 6pm on the LCC Facebook page or wait for the Lismore App story on Wednesday morning.