The Council is to submit a development application for a modified Goodwood Oval Grandstand. We will present it to Council’s Assessment Panel in November.

Council receives an information report on Monday to advise the current status of this project. As we are in caretaker mode we can only receive the report.

The report confirms that a modified design is ready to be presented to Council’s Assessment Panel. The Panel of 5 (with but 1 elected member) is an independent panel, created under the Development Act.

They are duty bound to determine if it be approved or refused, based on Planning principles. As it is a cat 3 public notification application they (the panel) will hear representations from the community.

The design has been modified. It takes into account observations earlier this year from the community.

It also takes into account a need to reduce the scope of works to meet tight budgetary constraints. I would venture to suggest too, a more efficient design.

There are two key features of the modifications as I read the drawings. They cover two of the major concerns raised by members of the community.

The first is the building footprint will again be not much different to the existing building. The second is the clubroom area is being reduced back to a seating capacity of (in theory) 120 people. This, down from the 200 last proposed. This is not much more than the seating capacity of the existing clubroom.

Assuming development approval is granted, the new Council will have to determine how to best address the budget pressures. Among their choices will be;

• reducing the scope of the project even further,
• seeking additional funding (perhaps this time from the Federal Government), or
• funding the shortfall ourselves.

With all this, onsite construction of the modified Goodwood Oval grandstand (or other) is unlikely prior to the end of June, 2019.

Written & authorised by Don Palmer, 19 Kelvin Avenue, Clarence Park SA 5034