Direction 3 A Centre that Attract Investment and Jobs

The creative sector will flourish with increased and affordable art exhibition and co-working spaces that provide visibility and opportunities for co-creation.

Reduced restrictions to trading hours and night-time activity and a mix of permissible uses will facilitate a 24-hour city to support the needs of residents, workers and students as the City emerges into a health, academic, research and training precinct.

What do we know?

· Bankstown is the largest strategic centre in the Canterbury Bankstown LGA

· Under the Greater Sydney Commission’s South District Plan, strategic centres will receive investment from State and Local Governments to realise housing, jobs, transport, community infrastructure and sustainability futures.

· In 2020, there were approximately 11,000 jobs in Bankstown (SGS, 2020). The City currently contains 738,438sqm of commercial office, retail and health/education and community floor space, with commercial office floor space comprising the largest proportion of these categories (49%).

· The Local Strategic Planning Statement adopts a vision for Bankstown to be a genuine health and education precinct with a cluster of knowledge intensive and population servicing sector. It adopts a total jobs target of 25,000 by 2036.

· To meet the 2036 jobs target, the City needs to attract an additional 14,000 jobs or 420,000sqm of employment floor space.

What are we proposing?

Objectives and actions within this direction will help ensure Bankstown grows into a genuinely vibrant and successful employment centre offering diverse employment opportunities with health and education specialisations and leverage new, major infrastructure – Sydney Metro and a Western Sydney University campus. The NSW Government has also committed to a new $1.3 billion hospital investment in Bankstown, with the site yet to be announced. A hospital within the Bankstown City Centre has the capacity to spur further investment in allied and private health, retail and supporting employment sectors. Bankstown will retain and capitalise on its fine grain retail components, diversity and support a vibrant night-time economy.

To achieve this vision, a number of actions will protect existing employment floor space and ensure there is enough capacity and flexibility in planning controls (supported by feasibility analysis) to facilitate the development of retail and office uses, health and educational facilities and creative/cultural uses. The City’s employment-generating land use capacity will be increased to accommodate the additional 14,000 jobs targeted by 2036.

Bankstown will be a thriving economic hub for the region. The City will be a genuine employment focused centre. A commercial core zone and increased employment floor space requirements within planning controls will accommodate a mix of health, education, knowledge intensive and population serving sectors and create a total of 25,000 jobs by 2036