The proposed Barossa Culture Hub continues to gain momentum with the development application currently before the state assessment officer.
Costing for the proposed Barossa Culture Hub has the project at $11,702,579 ex GST and Council’s commitment to the project is $5.854 million with a commitment by the The Clubhouse being $650,000.
Council’s director corporate and community services, Ms Jo Thomas said the project was one of the prioritised projects approved by Council last year.
“Officers are progressing those planning elements in the same way as they have for other Big Project elements and as per Council decisions,” said Ms Thomas.
“That process incurs development costs in relation to remaining architectural work, planning development processes, etc and as indicated on Tuesday, (during the Council meeting) the grant application process itself.”
The grant application for the Building Better Regions Fund round four is currently before the panel.
“The Development Approval is all part of bringing the project to a shovel ready position as detailed in our Federal Building Better Regions Fund Round 4 Grant application,” said Ms Thomas.
“The first phase of this project is the Tanunda Club accommodation development in conjunction with our community partners and that already has development consent, so we need to position the sequential stages to follow on in accordance with our suggested project programme in the application.”
Barossa Mayor Michael “Bim” Lange saw many positives on the Barossa Culture Hub.
“The outcomes and benefits associated with the project are significant, not only in terms of jobs and the regional economy but also in relation to the community health and wellbeing impacts the creative and cultural industries are shown to deliver,” said Mr Lange.
“These will be increasingly important to support our community recovery from COVID-19, continuing drought and successive low yielding vintages.”
Grant funding applications
As revealed at The Barossa Council meeting last week, $54,000 was recently spent towards the project.
Ms Thomas said some of that is attributed to sourcing contracted consultants to assist with the Federal Government funding applications.
“Council officers undertake the vast majority of application work in house. However, there are limited internal resources to complete all of that work, particularly when there are several grant programmes all with similar closing dates,” said Ms Thomas.
“For all the recent federal applications we have contracted consultants to support and advise.”
She said Council officers are pursuing grant applications on multiple fronts and in the last month alone four new grant funding applications have been prepared.
Ms Thomas said these are for sporting infrastructure upgrades at Lyndoch Recreation Park; court and lighting upgrades at Old Talunga Park; town centre improvements at Mount Pleasant; and open space development at Stockwell Recreation Park.
