NEWSWATCH
ORANGE CITY
LOCAL NEWS DELIVERED WITH — INTEGRITY — WISDOM — BALANCE Saturday 17 October, 2020
www.orangecitylife.com.au
ISSUE No. 22
IT’S BOOM BOOM BOOM FOR ORANGE BUILDERS!
FREE
Talking POINTS
with DAVID DIXON Talk about beating the hornets’ nest with a great big stick! Cr Scott Munro’s recent suggestion that Orange residents need a break from water restrictions certainly got a reaction from locals. A local Facebook discussion had more than 80 comments, and not a lot of them supporting the idea. While “Newswatch” has run a series on our water situation — with another feature on page six of this week’s edition — it may not be the time to lift our foot from the pedal in learning to make better-use of what is a scarce resource in the “Little Apple”. Footpaths, like roads, are one of those public utilities things that all residents and ratepayers love to complain about. Council is getting-on with repairing a number of cracked and misaligned footpaths around town with a tripling of spending seeing much concrete being dug-up and re-laid around town.
It’s a building boom boom boom in Orange with land availability the only thing holding the Colour City back. “It’s crazy, and that is an understatement,” Jamie MacDouall from BT Homes said of the current building frenzy. Travel bans due to the coronavirus, people spending more time at home, and the Government’s $25,000 stimulus package for first home builders, has seen locals rushing into bricks and mortar.
A flourishing Cadia Mine, new developments such as the new DPI and private hospital, and an unemployment rate of less than four percent, have added to the rush to housing in the local area, Tim Leyton from Bellriver Homes added. However, available sub-division land is proving the bottleneck for local builders whose books are overflowing. “Our calendars are full for a year, but there’s just an urgent lack of land available to build on,” Gillian Coleman from Hotondo Homes explained. But with the Federal Government’s stimulus funding due to end on December 31, everyone’s trying to get in now, she said, and builders simply can’t keep-up.
• • Story continues on page 3
How to keep your head-down and chin-up for the HSC Class of 2020. Exams start Tuesday. n Turn to page 7 for our tips to surviving the big test.
HE
RTS
FOR ORANGE
This isn’t soon-enough, however, for one reader who recently described the footpath outside of Cook Park along Summer Street as “Orange’s latest work of art” (Jackson Pollock, perhaps). “It has hundreds of cracks along it and Council has painted the cracks, probably to warn people of the danger but also to identify where repairs are needed,” the resident said. “The future is now” was a nifty advertising slogan from the 1990s but it could well be the headline for a recent Council announcement of the imminent start for one of of our “Future City” major projects. Future City of course is the “bold and largescale upgrade of the central business district (CBD) involving three years of projects ranging from business support such as website development, to large scale projects such as a mall in Anson Street and a community square in McNamara Street.” The first project involves work getting started on the McNamara Lane precinct next month.
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