| City of Palmerston A BIG FUTURE
City of Palmerston |
| City of Palmerston A BIG FUTURE Palmerston – the second largest city in the Northern Territory – is a young, vibrant regional hub with a fast-growing future. Since commencing in 1982, the city has evolved rapidly to boast more than 36,000 residents, two shopping centres, a well-utilised regional library, a GP Super Clinic, a swimming and fitness centre, a recreation centre and gymnasium, a number of sporting grounds, a water park, and a wide range of local businesses.
City of Palmerston |
| City of Palmerston At BMD we see things differently. We see our strengths in the quality of our people and our genuine relationships with clients, partners and communities. As a company engaged in engineering design, construction and land development for clients and partners in the urban development, transport infrastructure and resources and energy sectors we employ a relationship based model founded on certainty, collaboration and performance. BMD is proud to have operated in the Top End for the past 18 years. Our business is our people. Contact details: Richie Ward, Construction Manager 08 8930 4455
City of Palmerston | In recent years, Palmerston’s population has grown between 4 and 5 per cent per year, making it one of the fastest growing cities in Australia, as well as the current growth corridor for the Greater Darwin Region. To meet the needs of this evolution, Palmerston is undergoing a significant period of infrastructure development, which has involved the recent delivery of many high-quality residential suburbs, as well as detailed plans for a reinvigorated city centre. Ricki Bruhn is the CEO of the City of Palmerston. He moved to the city and took on his current role in 2010. Prior to that, he had been working in local government for 30 years on the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia. He says he has no regrets about making the transition to the Northern Territory. “I’ve thoroughly loved my time with the City of Palmerston,” he says. “I’ve enjoyed the casual lifestyle, the facilities are excellent, and it’s just a nice community to live in. I have just commenced my second five year contract and are looking forward to the future development of the city”. In particular, Ricki appreciates the fact that the city is fairly young, and so is the infrastructure – “it still has that shiny feel to it,” he says.
| City of Palmerston
City of Palmerston | The same applies to its residents, as Palmerston boasts a multicultural community with an average age of only 28. To service their young families, Palmerston boasts an assortment of well-planned suburbs with established parks, playground and recreational areas, and a range of other amenities including the aforementioned waterpark, which is free to enter, as well as an 18-hole golf course. Each year, more and more people respond to the opportunity that Palmerston represents. According to Ricki, the city creates anywhere from 400 to 500 new residential lots every year. “A lot of people, like me, are recognising the city’s offering and choosing Palmerston to live,” Ricki says. Located just 20 kilometres from the CBD of Darwin, Palmerston is also easily accessible and well-serviced to meet both tourism and business needs. On the tourism side, for example, it is on the way to the Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks, and is serviced by the new $50 million Rydges Palmerston Hotel and Quest Serviced Apartments. On the jobs side, meanwhile, the city is currently serviced with three industrial and commercial areas – Pinelands, Yarrawonga, and
| City of Palmerston A LOT HAPPENING the new Wishart Industrial precinct. The new Gateway Shopping Centre and the Palmerston Regional Hospital, which are both still under construction, are also primed to create many new jobs. Those developments are also representative of the continuing growth and development that makes Palmerston so attractive to business. “In the past, Palmerston has been viewed as a ‘workers camp’ which is used to service Darwin,” Ricki admits. “But now we’re seeing businesses and commercial operators set up in the city and taking advantage of everything it has to offer.” The Gateway Shopping Centre in Yarrawonga is a $300 million landmark development not only for Palmerston, but for the Greater Darwin Region in general. Stage 1 will include over 30,000 square metres of retail and leisure space and more than 80 speciality shops. The development is being undertaken by Coombes Property Group. Upon completion in 2017, Stage 1 will boast a Woolworths, Big W, and Event Cinemas, as well as a dedicated restaurant precinct and a food court. The completion of future stages, including a homemaker cen-
City of Palmerston | tre, will see the development increase to over 60,000 square metres of retail space. According to Ricki, the centre is projected to generate numerous economic and social benefits. Those benefits include not only the creation of 3,000-plus jobs over the three stages of the project, but also the retention of retail spending in the Territory that had been previously escaping interstate. “That development will provide a lot of opportunities for people in Palmerston,” Ricki says. The same is true of the new $150 million Palmerston Regional Hospital, which is set to open its doors to patients in 2018. That will be the Northern Territory’s first new public hospital in almost 40 years, as well as the most technologically advanced healthcare building in the NT, where it will treat thousands of residents each year and employ 340 staff. In-house, the City of Palmerston has been concentrating on revitalising their CBD, and has developed a detailed City Centre Master Plan to achieve that vision. This plan provides a vision and framework to achieve better planning and urban design outcomes, and was designed to facilitate the ongoing development of the CBD whilst solidifying a firm identity for the
| City of Palmerston city. A key part of Palmerston’s Master Plan is the Goyder Square Redevelopment. That project – located in front of the Palmerston Library – will connect the civic centre of Goyder Square with the Water Tower Park to create a vibrant new social hub where residents are able to meet, relax, and enjoy Palmerston’s tropical lifestyle. The redevelopment of Goyder Square will feature landscaping designed to ensure the new-look square will grow into a shady, green haven for residents. It will also provide new infrastructure for the popular Palmerston Markets, as well as a new community venue to hold events. Another important component of the City Centre Master Plan is the upgrade of ‘The Boulevard’ which will be transformed over time to be Palmerston’s bustling main-street, and will support new opportunities for restaurants, cafes, and retailers. Stage 1 of that upgrade included several works to help integrate the street with Goyder Square, and was completed in February 2015. Just this month, council has given the green light to proceed with the final stage of this project at a cost of $4.57 million which will see these works completed in
City of Palmerston | Elton Consulting is proud to have created a vision and provided planning, consultation and project management services for the City Centre Master Plan and delivery of projects. We collaborate and think strategically to: • create great places and facilities for people • develop plans and strategies that work • communicate and engage meaningfully with clients, communities and stakeholders • improve communities, services, systems and organisations • design materials that bring projects to life. Elton Consulting is pleased to work with City of Palmerston www.elton.com.au Darwin | Sydney | Canberra YOUNG AND GROWING September 2016. “Once this project is completed, council will have spent $16 million on upgrading its CBD to provide better facilities for our residents,” he reports. “That’s very exciting for us.” Other recent or upcoming developments that have the City of Palmerston excited include: the recently-opened Rydges Palmerston Hotel; a new $20 million Woolworths under construction in the inner-city suburb of Bakewell; the $88 million Tiger Brennan Drive Duplication, which will improve traffic flow from Darwin to Palmerston; the $21 million Bellamack Special School; and two more new schools currently being planned in the recently-created suburb of Zuccoli. Development consent has also been received for the landmark ‘Boulevard Plaza’ complex in the centre of the Palmerston CBD. This project in excess of $150 million will include high-rise buildings incorporating mixed uses of residential, retail and commercial. The NT Government has recently committed $57m on a series of road improvements in Palmerston aimed at boosting safety and productivity and to ensure the road network keeps pace with the rapid development. “There’s a lot happening right now – and there’s a lot that’s going to happen,” Ricki says. “There are a lot of outcomes we’re looking for in our master plan and we’re well on our way to achieving them.” Moving forward, Ricki says that the council’s vision remains centred on the CBD. In particular, they hope to see mixed-use highrise development take place in the land that remains vacant, and they are currently seeking expressions of interest from developers with the financial capacity and experience to take that kind of work on. “Our goal is to give the CBD a bit more vitality by having people live within it,” Ricki says. “We believe there are great opportunities for residential living. We have large developments happening on the fringes, including the new
| City of Palmerston hospital and the Gateway Shopping Centre, but the people who work at those places need somewhere to live, and that’s where we see our CBD come into play.” Interested developers are encouraged to contact Ricki by emailing palmerston@palmerston.nt.gov.au. “We’re a very proactive city,” Ricki concludes. “We’re young, we’re growing, we’re ambitious, and we’re open for business.” “We believe Darwin is basically fully developed, with very limited land available for growth, so we believe that in the future the growth will be in and around Palmerston. We think we’ve got a very big future, that there’s a lot of opportunity, and we want to capitalise on that opportunity.”
City of Palmerston |
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