Region. Transport infrastructure a must

Community leaders, planning experts and the public at large have called on Premier Barry O’Farrell, to get Sydney moving again and make connecting the city with the west his No 1 priority: more transport infrastructure to link inner Sydney with outer suburbs and a major road and rail corridor between Parramatta and the Sydney CBD. “It is inevitable that Parramatta will become the city’s second CBD, and infrastructure planning must be recast with that at the front of our minds,” said Gary Sturgess, the former director general of the NSW Cabinet Office, in the Greiner government, in The Daily Telegraph.

Parramatta. 700-car commuter carpark

Parramatta City Council will seek redevelopment proposals for the Macquarie Carpark site, in Macquarie Street, in the Parramatta CBD, including the provision of a new 700-car commuter carpark “ This will allow the future redevelopment of council’s central city carpark sites, unlocking new opportunities to grow Parramatta’s CBB and more jobs to Parramatta,” said council’s CEO, Dr Robert Lang

Parramatta. Properties sold in the CBD

The Heathley Keystone Property Fund No. 29 has bought the 10-storey, 8100-square-metre office building, at 80 George Street (on the corner of George Street and Horwood Place), in the Parramatta CBD, for $27 million, from 360 Capital Office Fund. Trinity Property Trust has sold Enterprise House, at 1-3 Fitzwilliam Street, in the CBD to a local investor for $28.3 million. The building is fully leased to the NSW Office of Fair Trading until 2013.

Parramatta. New civic leader's plans

Plans by Parramatta’s new lord mayor, John Chedid, include a strong focus on commercial districts so that the CBD continued to attract new workers and by developing an innovative approach to business. “I’m confident we can cement our city’s status as one of the nation’s leading economies. I want Parramatta to be the model of economic growth in this country and set commercial benchmarks that other cities follow,” he said. Independent Councillor, Michael McDermott, has been elected as deputy lord mayor.

Blacktown. City is a ' total disgrace'

Councillors at Blacktown City Council have accused the State Government of favouring Parramatta with big-money office blocks including a new justice precinct, Sydney Water and a police HQ, according to The Daily Telegraph. At Wednesday's council meeting, councillors discussed inviting Premier Kristina Keneally to the "derelict CBD" to show her its potential for future government departments. "You can wear all the T-shirts you like saying, 'I love Blacktown' but when you come to the city it's a total disgrace," councillor Jess Diaz told the meeting. "If you want major investment you have to face facts and have the infrastructure to support it," said Pierre Esber, on Parramatta City Council.

Parramatta Jobs growth prospects

Parramatta City Council maintains its own trend estimate, and that stated in the Department of Planning’s (DOP) Metropolitan Plan (2005), of between 30,000 and 40,000 additional workers in the city, in the next 20 years, rather than the “likely” additional figure, released in December 2009, of 11,000, by 2036, as forecast by the Department of Transport’s (DOT) Transport Data Centre (TDC). “The TDC forecasts were based on work by Access Economics which was in the middle of and took account of the GFC at a time when there was a lot of doom and gloom,” council said. The DOT said it took into account the fact that Parramatta did not grow in employment terms between the 2001 and 2006 census and plans for increased development in a range of other areas such as Olympic Park and Macquarie Park, Western Sydney Employment Area, Green Square and Barangaroo. “DOT forecasts of a likely future, and DOP’s use of targets to help stimulate development, are legitimately different,” the DOT said.

Parramatta. CBD is a model

Parramatta, Western Sydney’s major regional centre, has reached critical mass and appears now to be ready to emerge as an independently growing metropolitan business centre, according to a UWS report, North-West and Central-West Employment Strategies. “At last, there is now a model for the development of a successful regional city in Sydney away from the downtown CBD. Western Sydney’s other regional centres could well be poised to emulate Parramatta’s success as growth intensifies in their environs,” the report said

CBD might lose its ranking

Parramatta City Council promotes its CBD as the sixth largest in Australia but that ranking may be in jeopardy following a report in the Sydney Morning Herald. The paper said the NSW government had a plan to make Macquarie Park the fourth largest CBD in Australia, behind Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and ahead of Adelaide or Perth. Should that eventuate the Parramatta CBD would likely drop down a place to seventh position. The paper said billions of dollars were being spent turning the are into Australia's answer to Silicon Valley, with technology busineses setting up to an expanding Macquarie University