Masterplan is master disaster

Mayor, I take it that your answer to my request for a public meeting about the proposed new grandstand at Woy Woy Oval is no.

What a shame.

If the plan is so great why are you so loathe to publicly demonstrate its virtues and give others a chance to have a say?

Perhaps it's because it's not actually all that great after all.

The condemned grandstand incorporated a ticket booth and ground entry, toilets, change rooms for both teams, referee's room, announcer's box and a canteen.

Under your Masterplan, these are all to be separate structures.

This, you explain, would allow a phased implementation.

The problem I have with that is, which buildings will be completed in phase one, and which in other phases?

Are we to have a facility with no toilets or one with no changing rooms?

But wait a minute, why are all these separate buildings at all?

Why are they not an integral part of our brand new grandstand?

It's because there is no grandstand.

There is only tiered seating.

With a budget exceeding $8 million, we are to get a few raised seats with inadequate views at a cost of around $14,000 each.

This few rows of concrete could, with a bit a clever designing, be made off-site in pre-cast sections and installed in a week.

I observe in the budget released in March there is a provision of $50,000 for field relocation.

I am yet to see justification for moving the field.

Being that as it may, moving it closer to the existing tennis courts will surely endanger users of that facility and the removal of the trees at the northern end, to include grass mound seating, would result in many goal kicks bouncing off windscreens in the car park.

I am also wondering if this provision includes moving the four lighting towers?

With parking in Woy Woy already at a premium, the plan removes the 50 spaces adjacent to the oval.

A nice little grassed area may well be the beginning of the creation of a vibrant and accessible community hub but I wonder if the users of the proposed medical health office would prefer to be able to park almost at the door or have to push their walker a hundred yards through the pot-holed car park behind the pub?

The Masterplan is a master disaster.

We had a very adequate grandstand incorporating all the necessary facilities for officials, players and most importantly spectators.

This proposal will require enormous initial expense, excessive on-going maintenance costs, which Council has proven doesn't happen, just look at the present scoreboard, and is a retrograde step for all the users.

If I may mix a few metaphors, you are hanging your hat on a white elephant which will come back to bite you.

Email, 10 Aug 2013

Fred Charles, Woy Woy