Lismore’s new CBD plan to survive future floods and get back to business

Experts involved in the rebuild of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have turned their talents to helping Lismore business owners “waterproof” the CBD.

Experts involved in the rebuild of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have turned their talents to helping Lismore business owners “waterproof” the CBD.

Conceding it will take a tonne of money and many years for flood mitigation, the community leaders have worked with experts to rethink the CBD so that disruption is relatively minor next time the business district goes under.

Elizabeth Mossop, a Professor of Landscape Architecture at UTS and Adjunct Professor at Southern Cross University, was living in New Orleans in 2005 when an estimated 1500 people died, mostly due to flooding after the hurricane hit.

She was extensively involved in the recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans and now runs a team in the Northern Rivers Living Lab tasked with making Lismore a sustainable and safe place to live.

Lismore underwater in 2022.

“You can’t prevent the flooding coming into the CBD but you can try to change the CBD so that the disruption is relatively minor, businesses can evacuate quickly and be out of harm’s way and businesses can get going again a week after an event rather than weeks or months later,” Professor Mossop said.

“You find a way where people can live with the floods.”

Professor Mossop was “lucky or unlucky enough” to have moved to New Orleans in 2004 running a school of landscape architecture.

“All my plans were thrown up in the air and I ended up with a lot of expertise and interest around all these issues of flood mitigation, post-disaster environments and worked on that whole big project for more than ten years,” she said.

Espresso cafe in Lismore NSW

“Then when the floods happened in Lismore I had a friend who had taken a job at Southern Cross Uni and she said ‘please come and talk to us about what we ought to do’.

“That was in the time between the two giant floods, I went up there and it was so much devastation and so ­familiar.”

Professor Mossop said having been through something similar she became “obsessed” with not wanting to see people make the same mistakes.”

So was born the collaboration between Southern Cross Uni, UTS in Sydney known as the Living Lab.

Funded by the state government’s Reconstruction Authority and the two unis, the Lab brings together the best technical advice in science, engineering, planning, design and social science.

“One of the big things that we learnt out of Katrina was that if you don’t do this with the communities and bring them with you it’s never going to work,” Professor Mossop said.

Catastrophic floods swept through Lismore in 2022.

“It’s the shortcut to getting the right answers. You’ve got to involve and inform and work very closely with people who live there because they are also the experts on the place and community and so that’s very much at the heart of what we are trying to do.”

Professor Mossop said safeguarding and transforming the CBD was crucial to the town’s identity.

“We are seeing more and more property owners who are doing lots of retro-fitting, especially the first two floors to make them resilient to floods,” she said.

“It’s not rocket science but it’s about thinking differently, using materials that won’t be damaged and equipment that can be moved up floors or onto a truck and taken away to higher ground.”

Of course the work doesn’t stop at the CBD.

The Living Lab is working with the NSW Reconstruction Authority on the Mt Pleasant housing project that will deliver up to 50 new homes and will showcase a range of housing types suitable to the Northern Rivers.

Professor Mossop learned from the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Picture: AFP PHOTO / Robyn Beck

The homes will be a mixture of relocated homes, smaller homes on smaller lots and other housing types like townhouses and manor houses.

“The aim is to build more affordable houses that are better matched to people’s needs than the current housing stock available in the region,” Pros Mossop said.

Dark Horse Espresso cafe in Lismore NSW Owner, Brendon Thurgate and his staff. (L-R Emerson Thurgate, Brianne Wilcox, Brendon Thurgate, Emma Clark, Alice Boscheinen). Thurgate has plans for the next Lismore flood.

The Living Lab is working with a large group of state agencies and community-based organisations to create a visualisation of the Richmond River catchment to show all of the catchment work taking place to support collaboration and make more efficient use of resources.

Her team is also working with the NSW Reconstruction Authority on a project to take valuable materials from buildings being demolished and re-use it productively: “The Lab is also working with the disability services provider Multitask to create a therapeutic and educational garden for their clients.”

This week Lismore residents get the chance to understand and visualise the Living Lab’s proposals for the town’s future. On Tuesday they are invited to the presentation at Lismore Heights Bowling Club where organisers are hoping for lot of community feedback.

Lismore City Council is driving many of the changes and working with The Living Lab and other bodies.

Mayor Steve Grieg said: “It’s vital we rely on experts from around the world”.

“Over the next few years, we are aiming for close to 1200 blocks of land to be released, a major regional health precinct and new accommodation providers.”

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