A skate park in the northern suburbs could become a vibrant community hub, like the Port Kembla DIY skate park. Photo: Boden Smith.
After decades of campaigning from the community, Wollongong’s northern suburbs have been earmarked for a skate park — as has the CBD.
The most recent round of community consultation delivered resounding support for the suggested sites of WF Jackson Park in Thirroul and MacCabe Park in Wollongong.
Councillor Richard Martin said of more than 1000 responses to Wollongong City Council’s call for feedback, about 87 per cent were happy with the selected sites.
He said concerns had been raised about access to and toilets in WF Jackson Park, but those amenities were available as part of the wider precinct.
“There are traffic lights at the library and Coles to cross the road safely,” Cr Martin said.
“Toilets are 100 metres away in the Coles building.
“To see the joy on kids’ faces at the community consultations when they learnt they were getting a skate park makes me proud to be a part of this council.”
Just 138 responses indicated they were unhappy or very unhappy with the site.
The vast majority of unhappy or very unhappy respondents were aged 60 or over; that age group had an almost even split between happy and unhappy respondents.
Cr Dan Hayes said the overwhelmingly positive response had nixed his concerns that the feedback sessions would be “lightning rods” for negativity.
He said the way the feedback sessions were conducted could be a roadmap for future community consultation on other projects.
“It’s hard to get feedback from people who have busy lives,” he said.
“But this highlighted the importance of getting feedback from a broad range of community members, and not allowing a small group of people to be overrepresented.
“I’m so glad we’re here and talking about the next steps.”
Cr David Brown said it was important to clear up community concerns about the use of AI in analysing submissions about the proposal.
Council staff told the meeting that AI was used to group large volumes of submissions by theme.
After the AI had sorted the submissions into groups, its work was checked by a staff member who reviewed the groupings.
Cr Jess Whittaker said she was delighted to see the project get underway, and hoped the step from approval to finished build would be as speedy as the Port Kembla skate park.
“Now we have a site, I think it will happen quite quickly,” she said.
“We’ve paid for the report, we’ve done the consultations, let’s give staff a clear direction to move forward. We have some very excited children waiting.”
The council will write to the Member for Heathcote, advocating for a funding commitment for the northern suburbs skate park project.
