Austin Butler Access community poll

We invited you to help determine the future of Woy Woy’s Austin Butler Access, the lot adjacent to Austin Butler Oval and Peninsula Plaza.

At September’s Ordinary Council Meeting, it was resolved to seek formal community feedback on whether you support Austin Butler Access remaining under the control of Council, or whether a sale to the shopping centre should proceed to improve pedestrian safety and facilitate goods vehicle docking (see attachment) with the funds going towards the long-term greening of the local area.

We are asking you to select between these options:

1. Retain Austin Butler Access in Council ownership
   • This would retain the status quo, keeping the area as part of Austin Butler Park with goods vehicle access through it to the shopping centre.
2. Proceed with the sale of Austin Butler Access to the shopping centre
   • This would allow for improvements to the shopping centre loading area to improve pedestrian safety, which would require removal of around 20-40 trees on the site.
   • Funds from the sale would be allocated to an extensive street tree planting program which aligns with Council’s Greener Places Strategy. The sale could fund sourcing, planting and maintenance of more than 8,500 trees across the Peninsula region.

The area proposed for sale (Figure 1) is just over 4,000 square metres (0.4 hectares), of which about 2,000 square metres (0.2 hectares) is currently used for access, car parking and goods vehicle movements and about 2,000 square metres (0.2 hectares) is parkland, including a stand of about 42 paperbark trees.

We sought the community's feedback about this as the shopping centre has approached Council seeking to purchase this land.

Council has also engaged an independent consultant to conduct a representative survey targeting residents of the Peninsula region.

Have your say

Between 16 October and 13 November 2023, the community was invited to vote via an online community poll.