I REFER to John Watt’s letter [‘Let’s discuss car park site’, January 16]. John is the spokesman for residents of Berry Court apartments which have existed beside the Berry-Worrigee streets car park for 50 years.
It is healthy and appropriate for John to have his personal views on the location of a “future” all-day multi-level car park and to pursue, with good intent, these views as he feels inclined.
However, as a member of the Nowra CBD Parking Development Committee which council recently absorbed, John included, into the Nowra CBD Action Committee, his personal views should not override the facts. In his letter to the editor, they do.
John, informed council staff worked separately from the Parking Development Committee’s team of experts to examine which of the five possible all-day multi-level car park sites in the CBD is preferable. The two groups, separately, came to the same conclusion: that the Berry-Worrigee streets site’s comparative matrix proved superior. You had the right, as a committee member, to be at all discussions.
The survey was never “deliberately silent”, “divisive”, “ambiguous” or “magically morphed” as you have written. It is misleading to write or say this.
Your personal opinion, that Stewart Place is a preferable site for an all-day multi-level car park, is over-ridden by the comparative matrixes produced by the two separate investigating teams.
In brief, Stewart Place is considered a too valuable future commercial site. When and if it is developed commercially, an established Berry/Worrigee streets all-day multi-level car park will be a valuable planned adjunct to it.
The committee is very conscious of the residents of Berry Court. Designs have included setbacks, maximum sunlight considerations and tree preservation with their comfort in mind.
It needs to be recognised that their’s is, in fact, valuable commercially zoned land, that a car park next door to them is not new to them and that they are on the very edge of a growing CBD which will, by necessity, experience change.
L. Sewell
Nowra CBD Parking Development Committee