Cameron Park may go for car parks

THE fate of a good swathe of Maclean's Cameron Park green space rests in the hands of Clarence Valley Council.

THE fate of a good swathe of Maclean's Cameron Park green space rests in the hands of Clarence Valley Council.

At today's civil and corporate committee meeting at the Grafton chambers councillors will decide whether to follow council staff's recommendation to use 2240sq m of the northern section of the park to create 103 replacement car parks.

The area of land would replace the 109 car parks that will be lost by the building of a supermarket in the Centenary Dr car park.

Another option in the council staff's report on replacement car parks was for council to buy a number of privately owned lots in the car park vicinity.

Despite not being on the civil and corporate committee, Cr Ian Tiley said he would speak on the issue at the full council meeting on September 20.

Cr Tiley said he had always been of the view the green space of Cameron Park should not be reduced to make way for more car parking spaces.

"My view has been all along that whoever builds the supermarket should be responsible for provision of all the parking," he said.

"That's the parking that they take over the bitumen now and the parking they require for the new supermarket facility."

He said the need for the council to find replacement car parks to accommodate the supermarket made the sale of the car park for $2.5 million less impressive.

"That takes a heap of the gleam off the $2.5 million offer."

He said that twice in the life of this council they had said they would not touch the green space.

"My view, and I tried to do this in May last year, is that we should try to lock it up forever by getting it reclassified to community land."

Cr Tiley said the council should reclassify the land to prevent it being used for car parking.

"My preferred outcome would be that council now bites the bullet and says let's go through the process of preserving the last 5500sq m of green space forever for the community."

Originally published as Cameron Park may go for car parks