Liverpool needs innovation hub to meet demands of growing city

NEW statistics showing Liverpool’s population will grow by 41 per cent by 2031 have led to renewed calls for major investment to turn the region into a world-class innovation precinct.

Western Sydney Director of the Sydney Business Chamber David Borger is calling for more investment in Liverpool. Picture: Joel Carrett

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NEW statistics showing Liverpool’s population will grow by 41 per cent by 2031 have led to renewed calls for major investment to turn the region into a world-class innovation precinct.

Figures supplied by the Sydney Business Chamber show Liverpool’s growth rate is more than twice that expected for the rest of NSW with an additional 86,950 people set to call the region home by 2031. Currently 214,150 people reside in Liverpool.

With the city on the cusp of major change, western Sydney director of the Sydney Business Chamber David Borger says now is the time for investment.

Liverpool Hospital will anchor the proposed innovation precinct. Picture: Melvyn Knipe

The chamber, with PricewaterhouseCoopers, released a report last year on the potential to transform Liverpool into a health, education, research and innovation hub.

It envisions a Centre of Excellence for Cancer and Translational Research to serve the southwest, a new private hospital and an advanced manufacturing, automation and logistics hub for medical devices.

The precinct would be anchored by Liverpool Hospital, the largest public hospital in NSW and one of the leading trauma centres in the country.

Former Justice of the High Court of Australia Michael Kirby speaks at the opening of the School of Law at the University of Wollongong's Liverpool campus in February this year.

In light of the predicated population boom, Mr Borger said the proposed hub would create a flood of employment opportunities and a city where residents can live, work and play.

“The precinct really is a place of innovation that’s going to generate huge jobs for Liverpool and western Sydney in the future,” he said.

Mr Borger pointed to the role the education sector would play in the proposed precinct, too, with two universities now based in Liverpool.

“Cities with universities are blessed and Liverpool is going from having no physical campus to having two universities,” he said.

The chamber is also calling for investment to improve the connections between Liverpool Hospital and the city centre.

Mr Borger wants to encourage better quality housing in the CBD and retail.

“That’s the whole point of living in a city centre — that things are walkable.”

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