Yesterday's announcement from the NSW Government about building 50 apartments in East Lismore was welcomed by Mayor Steve Krieg and the community.

More details about the Landcom project emerged throughout the day.

The exact location is the land immediately on the right-hand side of Crawford Road, with the East Lismore Cemetery on the left-hand side. The Build-To-Rent trial was first announced on 26 April when a deal was agreed to between Southern Cross University and Landcom, The NSW Government-owned land and property development organisation.

It is not part of the first Resilient Lands announcement made on February 9 this year when Premier Chris Minns, Minister for Planning and Public Spaces Paul Scully, SCU's Vice-Chancellor Professor Tyrone Carlin and Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin announced 400 blocks will be built on both sides of Crawford Road on the 72-hectare site.

$30 million will be spent to purchase the land and construct the 50 dwellings, which will be a combination of studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments in a flood-free area of East Lismore with 20% affordable housing. There will be two mid-rise buildings. The northern building will be three stories and will screen the lower-level southern building, which will be three stories above a ground-floor carpark.

(An artist's impression of the $30 million 50-apartment project)

Landcom says, "Pitched roofs, façade and balcony recesses help reduce the visual bulk and scale of the buildings so they blend with the surrounding character. Facades, roof treatments and materials reflect local architectural character".

Landcom outlined the timing of the design, build, and move-in phases of the project.

Community consultation will take place now until August 7, now that the draft design concept is complete, and a development application (DA) will be lodged with Lismore City Council following those consultations and any potential changes. Loose timing is the end of 2024.

Construction is anticipated to begin in 2025, pending approvals. Then, residents could move into the new apartments in late 2026.

The timing of the project is what concerns Lismore Mayor Steve Krieg.

"I think it's a great area for growth for Lismore. It's obviously flood-free land and has really good amenities in and around East Lismore. So, I think the location is really, really good.

"This is something that not just the Lismore LGA but the Northern Rivers is crying out for. The whole state is suffering from a housing crisis. So, I welcome the announcement.

(An artist's impression of the new apartments in East Lismore)

"We do have to change the way we live if we want to be a modern Regional Centre. Not everyone's going to live on a quarter-acre block in a three-bedroom, free-standing house. We need to change our thinking when it comes to housing. It's about catching up in a lot of respects. Lismore has been a little bit left behind as far as our planning and our identity is concerned."

Mayor Krieg's concerns stem from Lismore City Council's rebuild of its flooded assets, like its sewage treatment plants, that over six hundred new East Lismore residents could be using by the end of 2026.

"After all the discussions we've had with different agencies involved in the state government, whether the timelines given are realistic, given the fact that many of our council infrastructure is still running on life support because of the flooding of 2022.

"I talked about the Resilient Lands announcement of up to 400 blocks up around that same area. The state government wants those blocks released by 2025/2026, that sort of timeframe. Well, we need to get cracking on our infrastructure work. We need to get our sewage treatment plant underway and working again. And we need to get all of our waste programs up and running and working again.

"All of these things aren't 6 to 12 months away, unfortunately, they're 18 months to 2 years away at the earliest.

"So while I welcome the announcement, I am somewhat sceptical about the timing of it, given the fact that our infrastructure needs an overhaul before these blocks of land and these 50 apartments can really come online and be fully occupied."

(The East Lismore Sewage Treatment Plant May 31 2022)

Mayor Krieg explained that any infrastructure project, like roads, bridges or sewage treatment plants, can have up to nine different government agencies involved in its planning, design and construction.

"I have full confidence in the administration of the Reconstruction Authority now with CEO Mal Lanyon and locally with Kristie Clarke. They're two very good people in very difficult roles. But, the whole purpose of forming the Reconstruction Authority is to give councils, like Lismore, that one point of contact to deal with reconstruction.

"It's pretty easy to forget the scale of the devastation of the flood of 2022. The bureaucrats in Sydney didn't live through it, didn't experience it, and don't understand the scale of the damage that was caused by the floodwaters. And for us, who are still living it and still trying to work through it, and still trying to get basic services to a point where we can feel comfortable to provide those services for our ratepayers, it is a massive frustration for us that things feel like they are ticking over very slowly and methodically.

"We have people in our council who will be driving the ongoing maintenance and servicing of these infrastructure projects, and they want to be part of the design, and they want to be part of the build, and they want to have input. One of my big arguments and fights still is to let Lismore City Council be part of the solution.

"We are going to come a point sometime in the future where the state government agencies are going to walk away and leave the council in charge of their own destiny in a lot of respects. And we want to have some level of control over what we're left with. It's critical to the rebuild and the reconstruction that, whether it's Lismore, Ballina, Casino, any council that went through what we went through, is included in the conversations and in the construction of some of these infrastructure projects."

One of the counter-arguments to the building of new homes and land projects is that Lismore has roughly 562 fewer homes using the sewage and water services due to house buybacks. If we were in the same pre-flood position, that may be the case. However, the Lismore Sewage Treatment Plant is being described as 'being on life support", so it is barely able to cope with its current workload. And we know that the waste facility is critically damaged with our waste being shipped to Ipswich in Queensland.

Are we complying with EPA standards?

"At the moment, it is conforming with the EPA guidelines; it gets regularly tested and checked. So, everything's above board at the moment, but we can't bring on 50 new apartments and 400 new home sites in East Lismore alone. That's just in one area.

"If anyone has been to Wade Park, which is just down the road from these proposed developments, they'll notice a big brown brick building just on the corner. Well, that's a major pump station to the sewage treatment plant that services East Lismore and that whole region and that hasn't been fully repaired yet.

"If you think back to 2022, there was an announcement of $110 million for the sewage treatment plant upgrade. All of those pump stations were included because they were all underwater. They were all damaged by the flood."

Mayor Krieg explained the time frame for the sewage treatment plant rebuild to understand his concerns.

"The timeframe that I've been given is that the concept design will be completed by the fourth of December by Public Works for our sewage treatment network. Then it's going to go into detail design, which you're looking at another 6 to 12 months. Then it is costed, we have to find a suitable builder, so it's got to go out to tender, and then we're probably looking for a 12 to 18-month build. So, we are looking at late 2026, early 2027 at best.

"It gets frustrating pleading for our residents to be patient. But that's the sort of timelines that are handed to us by the state government agencies. I have absolute confidence in my sewage treatment team to have a design and have a costing and to be able to order all the required parts and mechanisms by the end of the year, if they were given the chance to. And it would be fit for purpose, it would be state of the art, it would be flood resilient, and it would do all the things that we need it to do to allow for further growth, like when the North Lismore Plateau, the East Lismore developments and the upgrades to all of the new Richmond River High School come online. And we know there will be more."

As we come towards the end of 2024, we will hopefully get a clearer picture of the infrastructure and housing timelines. We can only hope, that the infrastructure rebuild doesn't slow the new housing build.

There is another question about the $110 million that was announced in 2022. With construction costs increasing by over 20% in the last two years, will $110 million get the job done?

That is a story for another time.