Bright Village Square to go ahead

At long last this area, and the rest of Ireland Street, will be enhanced and converted into a modern, vibrant & functional civic space to reinvigorate the town centre and attract and retain more tourists.

“No major changes to Bright Future Project”, says council admin

• Detailed design for Bright clock tower environs to be fast-tracked
• New streamlined ’Town Framework’ committee to take over planning review
• Existing committee dissolved as being ‘unrepresentative’
• Big blow to anti-development group(s)

It was the best of news for Bright’s future and I have to admit to feeling somewhat vindicated by the outcome. At last Thursday’s re-convened meeting of the Bright Future Project Review committee (in which I’ve participated) Alpine council’s manager of strategic services, John Carter, effectively dissolved the group and advised that a new, more representative, committee would be appointed in the coming months to assist council in its forward plans for Bright.

The new committee is to comprise of 8 – 12 members who are to be selected from a broad cross-section of the community and will have input into a ‘whole of town’ Draft Framework. Mr Carter indicated that the existing committee, which was informally structured and ‘open to all comers’, was unwieldy and perhaps not truly representative of community opinion.

The news was not very well received  by the Bright Citizens Association who made up the majority of the 20 or so community members who had attended the three review workshops last year and who had initiated the review of the Bright Future document with the hope of having it rewritten to include restrictive development controls for the CBD.

Some of the BCA members present on Thursday complained that the review had been “rushed”, saying it hadn’t dealt with issues like height controls of buildings. It was also clear they were not happy with Mr Carter’s suggestion that their representation on the new committee would be limited to just one or two people.

John, and Strategic projects co-ordinator Simon Jones, were not having any of those complaints though, and were adamant that the original committee had “done its job” by confirming that the original Bright Future plans, which only covered the CBD area, were still relevant and would only need “fine tuning”.

Much to the displeasure of the BCA they advised that the Bright Future plans would not be thrown out & replaced with a costly new plan to include a set of restrictions on development but, instead, they would be kept as a relevant and strategic tool for direction regarding capital works and planning projects for the CBD.

The original committee had also identified that the major priority for CBD capital works was the revitalisation of the Bright Clock Tower environs, which will now be progressed with a detailed design expected to be finalised later this year with a view to including at least some of the works in next year’s budget.

Simon & John also said that the review committee’s call for improved development controls in residential areas would now be progressed (or looked at more closely) via a broad whole of town framework plan, rather than by extending the very detailed Bright Future Project. Once again, the BCA was none too happy with that either.

As well as having input into the draft framework plan for Bright the new Township Framework Committee will advise council on matters of significance relating to infrastructure, planning & development. Mr Carter said expressions of interest in the the new township committee will be advertised in the coming weeks.

Comment:

I’m glad that common sense has prevailed and that the existing Bright Future Project, which is a truly inspirational master-plan to upgrade Bright’s CBD, will NOT be thrown out and, instead, its centre-piece (the Bright Village Square) will become the number one capital works priority for Bright.

The revitalisation of Bright’s CBD is long overdue and much needed. I’ve been saying for a long time that Bright has fallen behind and is losing tourists because we have not made any significant improvements to the town centre. Hopefully we are now (finally) embarking on the long road to recovery with this latest shift in priority. 

I’m also glad that the council administration has realised that the Bright Citizens Association only represents the views of a tiny minority, who would like to put the clamps on nearly all commercial and residential developments, which would stifle Bright’s economic growth. 

And yes, I’ll be applying to be on the new committee. Let’s just hope that the next council we elect gives the administration the green light to get these works underway ASAP.