Athletics representative Melinda Mustapic said the decision was a step in the right direction for the Shoalhaven.

“I’m elated, finally some common sense has prevailed and I think it’s going to be best for the community,” she said.

“As I said before it was never about me and the athletics track, I think it will benefit a lot of people in the Shoalhaven.

“It is a growing community and I think there’s a lot of physical and mental health benefits of people being involved with sport.” 

Mrs Mustapic, who coaches a number of athletes, spoke of the urgent need in the Shoalhaven for an all-weather training surface.

“Last week, two weeks from our State Youth Championships, our only track in the Shoalhaven was closed for maintenance and the track was deemed unsafe,” she explained.

“I drove a car load of athletes to Kiama, just so we could get an important session completed, it seems crazy that we have to leave our area as the closest facility is in another council jurisdiction.”

Mrs Mustapic said the sports precinct was something the city deserved and needed.

“I do believe they can stage this development and hopefully the synthetic track can be brought forward and be a priority,” she said.

“Obviously for our group it’s huge, for us to have a facility like this we can use 12 months of the year would be fantastic.

“There’s plenty of people supporting this, not just in local council but in state government, we just have to keep moving forward with this.”

At an council meeting in December four councillors opposed the proposal which resulted in Councillor Guile launching a rescission motion, stating the plan was “absolutely imaginary rather than visionary”.

Sports precinct plan fails to stay on track

Councillor Mitchell Pakes was one of three councillors to back the rescission motion.

“I support this project 100 per cent, I just don’t support it in the current location,” he said.

“It was pointed out by the deputation made, we’ve got issues which need to be addressed now.

“Moving forward with a synthetic athletics track instead of this overall project may be a way forward, we may even be able to achieve it sooner by picking out smaller pieces of this project.”

Now the $60 million project has received the tick of approval, it will move to the next stage in the formal planning process to ensure it is shovel ready to secure possible funding.

“The whole plan was actually presented as something which can be staged to address those sorts of issues,” council’s director of Corporate and Community Craig Milburn said.

“Depending on the sports groups, we can do different stages in different orders and we can respond to those opportunities as they come up.”