Driving ideas for Docklands

An interesting month has just gone past in Docklands with the first round of the Docklands Summit workshops having been held. I attended along with a raft of fellow Chamber colleagues, Docklands businesses, residents, and reference groups.

Lots of fascinating ideas, many of them conflicting with one another but at heart there was a few key commonalities:

• Docklands needs activation of the harbour, action on Central Pier and a consolidated plan for Harbour Esplanade.
• There is a consensus that green planning and sustainability need to be at the forefront of thinking.
• Episodic activations while successful are not the long-term answer.

In participating in the Docklands Summit, it became very apparent to me that we aren’t hearing enough from. and who, the average resident in Docklands actually is. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released its preliminary figures from the census last year and I think they are absolutely fascinating.

Summarising – and please forgive the literary licence in doing so – the average person in Docklands is a 32-year-old who identifies from another culture (almost 70 per cent), with 1.6 children and a household income of $100,000 per annum.

I’d personally love to hear a whole lot more from this demographic as they are going to drive Docklands’ needs.

They are certainly driving the primary school which is already at capacity and looking to explode.

The school was a focus for the Chamber for many years so we’re so incredibly happy it’s such a success, we just hope that the next stage of planning allows for rapid expansion as Docklands is really becoming a family friendly precinct.

Keep an eye out for our activations in Docklands in the coming month. Docklands Dollars is going to have a few variations to promote spending in the precinct. •