Comments on the Streetscape Regeneration Project

$9M - You've got to be kidding! Yes, we need to make it look a bit better and add some native trees, but this is irrseponsible and completely unnecessary. Take a look at the malls in Maitland and Newcastle, where the population is 5+ times greater than Singleton - they are disastrous. Yes, they look pretty but noone uses them. They all go to the big shopping malls, which we are about to get another of with the Coles development. I, for one, don't want to pay higher rates to cover this over-the-top project.

This is obviously going to benefit a select few businesses and cost rate payers for many years to come. I do not agree with this proposal at all. I agree with 'Easter' that some trees and simple cosmetic adjustments would be of benefit. The budget and concept is excessive - a mall of any size will only make traffic worse and I'd love to know where they think all the alfresco diners are coming from? A drive around the dining venues of Singleton on Fri and Sat nights will show that these predicted patron numbers are farcical.

My views on this project are that I object to it. It could be enhanced by reducing the budget to a sensible, practical size with money put toward planting some trees and a solution to connecting old John Street at the Central Hotel. Extraordinary waste of resources when we need some much done in other areas.

Nothing Singleton does will ever make it a tourism centre for the vineyards. With such a wide choice of restaurants sprinkled among the vineyards around the Pokolbin and Lovedale areas, very few people will make a 15 minute drive to dine in Singleton.

Maitland Mall and Newcastle's Hunter Street Mall lost a lot of business to Greenhills and Kotara/Charlestown respectively and never got it back, most of the year it's like a "Ghost Town" there.

I guess Singleton has the advantage of having only one CBD area at this stage so even with the big redevelopment of Gowrie St Mall, people will still be frequenting the nearby John St shops and services etc.

The Chamber of Commerceis not self appointed - all businesses are entitled to join and have their say. Neither do we have "so much" influence - we have 4 members invited by the Council to sit on the the Advisory Committee, given that the CBD improvement greatly affects the businesses in it. All people in the Singleton Shire have the opportunity to have input into this project as it affects all who live here

I think you're dreaming if you believe that Singleton will ever compete with Maitland and Newcastle for shopping and entertainment. We have 1 cinema, no professional theatre, limited seasonal access to other areas of the arts, no beach, no markets,no Bunnings, no Harvey Norman, no Westfield Kotara or Greenhills. There's not even access to quality arts education here, which is why so many of our school-age population commute daily or weekly to Maitland and Newcastle. The fact is, people will always travel to Newcastle for their culture fix and for the wide variety of shopping and 'lifestyle' activities. The arguement that the price of petrol would deter people from pursuing activities that they'll never have access to in a rural community is clutching at straws. This is the pure and simple reality of living in a rural location. Let's get the traffic and parking right FIRST, and then we can look at the John Street project. You can't undo a project of this size once it has been completed - but with some patience and some sensible planning, we could get the foundations right first, then construct an appropriate frame from which to build.

I feel that small business will cop the brunt of the expenditure will suffer initially from this project. Increased rates, icrease in the cleaning fee from $7.70 per lineal metre to over $19.00per lineal metre is a great cost. Some are just that. Small business, not large corporation that if they have a slow week the rest of the chain is there to lean on. I feel there is too many medium strips in place impeding entry into some business without doing a loop to get back to the business, especially in south station precinct. and what about taking all but 9 parks away from the station. I feel we need to maintain as much of parking at the station as we can if not increase. Signage is a must to at least inform visitors that we have more to offer. I feel the raised section f the road in the alfresco will slow traffic too much and cause a bottle neck, Another area I have noticed is that there are too many pedestrian crossings close to intersections. York and Gowrie. I feel these could be moved for safety and let us think of a round about at Gowrie Street to allow good flow of traffic and lights outside of commonwealth bank to alleviate people crossing at will and at least give a decent continual flow of traffic.

The areas that have been paved and had new bins and seating put in look really good. Why not just finish doing the rest of the street in this way, rather than going so over-the-top with streetscape? And I believe the streetscape concept means that this previous work would be ripped up!? Think of the money that council already spent doing this work, that will now be destroyed. Think of the fact that in 20 years time the "future generations" people have been discussing will probably be talking about how faded and rundown streetscape now looks. I picture them complaining about the lack of parking, speedhumps, and poor traffic flow - all for a barely used al-fresco area - and lobbying council to return the main street to its current, practical state.

If the Alfresco dining precinct is going to be Annes Lane, as in the plan, I think we'd all be better off having it be Burns Lane. Annes lane doesn't even have shopfronts facing into it, but I will admit it would have little impact on traffic, apart from the for the pizza delivery drivers and those seeking to beat the sequence of the lights to the North by going to Ryan Avenue when the lights change against John Street Traffic.

Then again, I see cars the same cars parked for hours in the 15m parking zones we have now.

And people parked or standing in the no stopping zones either side of the pedestrian crossing near the Commonwealth bank. As the plan shows, there would be no problems here with the plan as those areas are removed and replaced with landscaping - would Singletonians just park on that now? :)

Seriously it is a good idea to create better safety and vision around the crossings and intersections along John Street especially with those offset side-street crossings we have now, people are hard to see until your almost committed to driving around the corner.

If you look at the plan, there are only some sections of the main street that have parking removed, it isn't as bad as some make it out to me.