Most liveable regional city gets major CBD facelift
Warrnambool is experiencing a well-deserved run of good news of late with the announcement earlier in the year becoming the highest ranked council in the Regional Cities Victoria (RCV) Liveability Index Report compiled by Deloitte. Warrnambool scored equal or higher than the world's most liveable city Melbourne, with the score based on themes including housing affordability, local amenities, nature-based attraction, social capital, physical capital and health and safety.
With Melbourne's population set to grow to a staggering 8 million by 2060, regional cities will play an important role in taking overflow. To entice people to move from a major city to a regional city you need to provide a certain feel, a cosmopolitan atmosphere with modern amenities and services, a reality acknowledged by Chief executive officer Bruce Anson, “If we want to attract people out of the metropolitan area, we do have a to have a moderate metropolitan feel. That will attract the doctors, lawyers, teachers, university professionals." This is exactly what Warrnambool City Council has been actively working on for many years, to build and continually improve the services it provides to the community to meet current expectations. This is an integral part of the WCC vision for the future, evident with the CBD Renewal Project, of which SED prepared the business case for in 2015.
The CBD renewal project will address a number of challenges and support economic development through a program of infrastructure and asset revitalisation to improve destination, function and sustainability of the CBD. In a nutshell, the heart of the city is getting a major (long over-due) facelift that will encourage economic growth and improve liveability.
SED prepared the Regional Infrastructure Fund submission for capital works and funding of $15M was secured. The project is now underway and can be followed on the WCC project website here.
