The Economic Development Directorate is setting a potentially dangerous precedent by asking the public for their votes on a development issue.
The Dickson Centre Master Plan was released in May 2011 following extensive consultation with the community. It included a number of sites for future supermarket and retail development in the Dickson Group Centre.
The Master Plan indicated that Block 19 would be released to a supermarket operator as a first priority.
It also indicated that Block 21 would subsequently be released for a full line supermarket and other speciality retail shopping stores in the future.However, there is an opportunity for the ACT Government to release Block 21 for two supermarkets. This would see two new supermarkets developed on this one site.
This would mean that Block 19 would not be released for development at this time. In the short term this block would remain a surface car park.
The ACT Government would like to know your preference for supermarket development at the Dickson Group Centre.
Voting closes 9 December 2011
The two options are:
- — Both supermarkets accommodated on Block 21 now.
— One supermarket on Block 19 and one supermarket on Block 21 later.
(We’ll resist the urge to run our own poll for fear of confusing the punters)
For those wondering:
— Block 21 is the land currently known as “The car park next to woolies”.
— Block 19 is “The car park behind the post office”
UPDATE: After our readers reported their votes being misallocated the voting process now leads to this message:
We are currently experiencing technical difficulties with the online voting tool. We apologise for any inconvenience and will provide notification on our homepage when this has been rectified.
Considering every house in the inner North got a flyer yesterday asking them to vote it’s a bit of a problem.