Pete Russell is never shy to vent about the state of the Nowra CBD. The normally affable real estate agent is passionate about his town and, like many of us, deeply frustrated by the inertia that seems to have the place in its grip.
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We might not agree with every point of view he shares but when it comes to the vacant land being held by retail and property giants Stockland and Woolworths, we stand shoulder to shoulder.
Just last week, we took a wander around one of those pieces of land, long ago acquired by Woolworths for a Big W which never eventuated. Littered with rubbish and idle after all these years, we wondered about what could have been: a department store to attract shoppers and ignite other stores and ventures around it.
Pete unleashed on his company’s website page on Wednesday about all the other blocks of land owned by Stockland and Woolworths around the Nowra CBD. Whether bought strategically to frustrate the plans of rivals or to sit on as long-term investments, they are holding our town back. These are empty blocks that ought to be filled, either with units or shops or a combination of both.
We know there’s strong demand for housing and we can safely assume that will grow as people move to the Shoalhaven, which is already a popular spot for internal migration in Australia.
Shrinking travel times between Nowra, Wollongong and Sydney and the unaffordability of those two population centres will only fuel this demand. Getting people to live closer to the Nowra CBD is one sure way to see it revitalised – and by that we don’t mean streetscaping, we mean human activity.
At the end of the day it’s people power that will bring the CBD to life – people shopping, eating out, being entertained, socialising, spending money. Ask anyone who shopped there in the 1970s and early 1980s and they will tell you it was then a thriving, exciting place to be.
Impacted by poor planning – the establishment of Nowra Fair (now Stockland Nowra) on the other side of the highway and the development of South Nowra as an alternative retail centre – the CBD needs all the help it can get.
Putting pressure on the corporations to either develop or divest their landholdings will go some way towards rescuing its future.
Pete Russell has done just that by focusing our attention on this roadblock to our town’s growth.
