Bushells Ridge: Plans for CASAR Park motorsport facility withdrawn
Plans for a $18 million motorsports facility and racetrack on the Central Coast have gone off the rails after founders could not negotiate ecological speed humps.
Central Coast
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Plans to establish a world class motorsport facility and racetrack at Bushells Ridge have crashed out on the penultimate lap.
The proponents behind CASAR Park have withdrawn its development application because they could not raise enough money to complete the necessary ecological assessments.
CASAR (Community Automotive Sport and Recreation) Park was the brainchild of several local business people who came together in July 2010 to create a “social enterprise”.
The idea was to match programs to address youth unemployment with the exciting business of motorsport.
Stage one of CASAR Park was to include a 3.5km racing circuit, pits and associated amenities, a driver training facility, a skid pan and go-kart track.
Future stages would see further improvements to the race facilities, a caravan and camping area, parklands, playgrounds and a speedway.
There were also plans to run road safety, driver and motorcycle rider training and vehicle skills programs, many of them falling under the umbrella of “motoring-related tourism”.
“Since that time we’ve had hundreds of meetings with interested stakeholders — individuals, clubs, business, government — over thousands of volunteer hours,” CASAR Park co-founder Brad Wilson said in a statement.
“But despite those years of knocking on doors, it has simply been impossible to raise the funds necessary to complete the required ecological assessments and so we have had to withdraw our Development Application.”
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He said the only way it could eventuate was if a private investor was willing to take the project on a “a purely commercial model”.
Set on a 140ha parcel of industrial-zoned land — granted to Darkinjung Aboriginal Land Council — the $18 million project was hoping to create 29 full-time jobs and up to 60 work experience places a year.
In 2014 former Wyong Council invested $80,000 to help advance the proposal, which won a Wyong Shire Business Award in the same year.
In 2015 it signed a 60-year lease with Darkinjung and the project appeared to be heading towards the home straight with stage one to be finished by the end of 2016.
However in October last year CASAR Park posted a statement about delays, blaming the state government and council for “moving goalposts when it comes to biodiversity legislation”.
At the time the state government had adopted a new framework for ecological studies but council was exempt.
“So without enough money to do the work under both old and new frameworks, we chose to wait for the new framework,” the statement read.
Long-term advocate of the proposal Central Coast Councillor Bruce McLachlan said it was unfortunate.
“I think there’s still strong support for a motorsport facility on the Central Coast, unfortunately the CASAR lease hold model has proven difficult to finance,” he said.
“It’s a shame council didn’t take up the opportunity to buy Old Sydney Town to facilitate these types of developments when the opportunity arose.”
Darkinjung chairman Matthew West said it was “really, really unfortunate”.
“This is another unfortunate outcome, hopefully it doesn’t become a pattern,” he said.
Mr West said Darkinjung would consider a commercial model “on a case-by-case basis”.
The collapse of CASAR Park comes after the closure of the Gosford Classic Car Museum.
Museum owner Tony Denny said he was not aware of the exact details of the CASAR Park proposal.
“However this would be a major tourist attraction and would attract major sponsors like (his development business) Central Real,” he said.
“It is such a pity that both state and local governments don’t offer some level of support as well as the fast tracking of the needed permits.”
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