Great news for Gungahlin - the first major offices are getting closer.

Great news for residents in our neck of the woods - Gungahlin. The ACT Government has received nine expressions of interest to build the new ACT Government office block in Gungahlin town centre.

And the Government has also advised that the 500 staff to be relocated to Gungahlin will be the Shared Services department, currently housed in Woden. Apparently the existing staff are about 50/50 north and south residents, so no prizes for guessing how many of them will be pleased/not pleased about the announcement. But there are at least two years to allow for a gradual transition.

Gungahlin Community Council meetings have featured presentations by two of these proponents (both already owning land behind the Emergency Services and with plans ready to go), so to know there are another seven out there is quite intriguing.

But it does underline exactly what we have been saying to the ACT Government for more than five years - instead of guessing what the commercial market is like, put the land out there and see. From our discussions with various developers, we've always known that the limiting factor has not been interest, but land released to the market.

It's harder now, with the squeeze of commercial credit, and had land been released four years ago, we'd probably already have office blocks by now.
And this is where having the ACT Government put their 'money where their mouth is' has been the necessary catalyst.

We believe that once this goes in, the whole local jobs situation will start to snowball.
Most welcome to see after so many years of GCC lobbying.

And if you'd like to work locally, you now know what vacancies to start targeting!

ACT Budget summary

Media release I wrote for GCC on local impacts of the ACT Budget:

The 2010–11 ACT Budget has been largely welcomed by GCC as a solid further step towards correcting years of lagging infrastructure, as the population surges past 41,000, on its way towards 100,000 people.

Transport

“This budget includes some very important projects for improving public transport services for Gungahlin commuters, over and above the most welcome continuation of the Gungahlin REDEX bus service” said GCC President Ashley Kerlin.

“For more than three years we have been asking for a major Park’n’Ride to be built at EPIC, for a ‘tidal’ bus lane down the centre of Northbourne Avenue, and a fix to the major congestion woes at the Phillip Avenue/Majura Avenue intersection.

Gungahlin offices on the radar

I managed to trigger Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner to talk about department offices in Gungahlin. Took an attack on how Bob McMullan has failed to deliver on his promise to stop departments relocating out to the airport.

The media release I put out was:

ALP welches on Gungahlin office relocation commitment

The Gungahlin Community Council has accused the Labor Party's Member for Fraser Bob McMullan of welching on his pre-election commitment to halt Federal Government office relocations to the Canberra airport precinct.

The Department of Defence has agreed to lease two new sites in the Airport's business park - tenants GCC says should have come to Gungahlin.

"If Bob McMullan had kept his promise to stop Federal Government departments from relocating to the airport, Gungahlin could well have seen its first major office tenancies through this Defence relocation," said GCC President Ashley Kerlin. "Instead he's allowed another key tenant to be crossed off the list for Gungahlin.