Sydney Olympic Park. Pullman pulls in patrons

Sydney Olympic Park has highlighted its position as Sydney’s fastest growing business, meetings, events and leisure destination with a 68 per cent increase in hotel occupancies for the year to September 2009. This comes on the eve of the first anniversary of the Pullman Sydney Olympic Park, Western Sydney’s first 5-star hotel, an Accor property, along with the company’s newly renovated Novotel Sydney Olympic Park, Ibis Sydney Olympic Park and Formule 1 Sydney Olympic Park, in the precinct.

Auburn. Council wins top award

Auburn City Council has won the Leadership and Management Excellence Award, for the Local Government Managers Association, for its innovative approach to achieving organisational improvement with it’s the Journey to Rebuilding Auburn City Council program. Also, council was highly commended for its community pride program.

Sydney Olympic Park. All eyes on precinct

Sydney Olympic Park will be the hub for the World Masters Games, which will attract approximately 25,000 people from upwards of 100 countries. They will compete across 28 sports at more than 70 venues throughout the city. The opening ceremony is on October 11. In December, the precinct will host the first V8 Supercar street race for Sydney. The 2009 V8 Supercar Championship will incorporate a three-day celebration, with on and off-track entertainment. It is expected the event will attract over 150,000 people over the three days, with almost 850 million homes worldwide watching the action through a global telecast.

Liverpool. High use of car for work

The Public Transport Independent Inquiry meeting in Casula heard 62 per cent of Liverpool residents use the car to get to work - 9 per cent more than the Sydney metropolitan average - and the number is increasing rapidly. Sixty per cent of the Liverpool population daily leaves the LGA for work and a very high proportion travel to work in Western Sydney suburbs whicgh are poorly serviced by public transport. The NSW Government has shelved the $1.36 billion south-west rail link but families continue to move into new housing estates in Edmondson Park, Austral, Middleton Grange and Leppington. ''The south-west rail link isn't completely off the agenda - they're still buying land in the proposed corridor for it. But we need them to actually put down a deadline for when they are actually going to build the thing.'' Liverpool Mayor, Wendy Waller, told the Sydney Morning Herald

Region. Sales of homes soar

Treasury figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph revealed the number of homes sold in the first two months of the financial year soared by more than 25 per cent Liverpool and Blacktown recorded the highest number of sales – 767 sales in July and August, worth more than $262 million. The difference now, claimed Treasury officials, was that first home buyers who pay no stamp duty were no longer making up the majority of transactions.