MOUNDS of soil cover a site off Captain Cook Drive, Greenhills Beach, where a long-awaited skate park was due to open this month.
Sutherland Shire Council "hopes" work, which has been dogged by delays, will recommence next month.
However, it all depends on the council resolving matters with Breen Property and Australand, who are developing the skate park and adjoining hockey fields as the first stage of what they have described as "a 91-hectare sporting and recreation mecca".
The new sporting facilities were a "trade-off" in a voluntary planning agreement that allowed the companies to develop former sand mining sites for housing.
It was initially intended the skate park be opened by last November but a problem over a Sydney Water easement led to the completion date being pushed back to June this year.
A council spokeswoman said this week negotiations were being finalised for the companies to carry out additional earthworks to enable the construction of synthetic hockey fields next to the skate park.
‘‘The fill required for the hockey fields is currently stockpiled on the skate park site,’’ she said.
‘‘Due to the nature of the development, the negotiations have been long and detailed, and council is hoping that works will recommence in July, subject to negotiations being finalised.’’
FROM GO TO WOE
Chris Lawson won’t believe the project is under way until he sees the bulldozers move in.
‘‘After seven years of working towards an outstanding, community focused facility, I’m just disillusioned, as are the skaters of the shire,’’ he said.
Mr Lawson, whose son Ryder, 17, is one of Australia’s top skaters, is a member of a steering committee set up by the council to make good on its resolution in 1997 to provide a skate park in the shire’s east.
He said council staff had worked hard to advance the project, but a small number of residents had blocked Don Lucas Reserve, Wanda, as the location, and the sand mining companies were in no rush to develop the new site because they weren’t bound by deadlines.
Mr Lawson said skaters had wanted the facility at Wanda so they would be ‘‘part of the community’’.
‘‘[We envisaged] people out walking would stop and look, like they do at the skate parks at Bondi and Maroubra,’’ he said,.
Mr Lawson said the new Greenhills Beach location was ‘‘out the back of nowhere’’, four kilometres from the roundabout outside Cronulla High School.
Even with the new path being built by the council, it would be a 40 minutes’ walk from Wanda.
Mr Lawson said skaters had only agreed to the site because they were promised quick completion.
He produced a note in his dairy to show, on May 20, 2010, the then mayor Lorraine Kelly called him to say if skaters agreed to the new site, ‘‘we will have a good skate park in 18 months’’.
‘‘Forty-nine months later, we’re still waiting,’’ he said.
Are you frustrated with the delays with this project? What do you think of the location?
