Draft of Burnie City Centre Urban Plan released

Published on 20 June 2024

Burnie City Centre Urban Plan: Bringing the beat back to Burnie’s city heart

The Burnie City Council has today released the initial draft of the visionary Burnie City Centre Urban Plan.

The full 152-page document provides broad-ranging ideas and concepts designed to transform our City Centre to create a vibrant and engaging place to work, live, shop and socialise. Additionally, the Council has prepared a 30-page summarised version of the document for those that don’t want the level of detail included in the full plan.

This initial Plan has been developed following community consultation that occurred in 2023 when the community was asked what they love about the city, what they would like to see improved and their vision for the future.

Based on feedback received from the community, including business owners and interest groups, this initial draft Urban Plan outlines a vision, the strategic directions needed, as well as a list of proposed projects to drive the renewal and attractiveness of Burnie’s CBD.

The draft document released today, however, is just our initial concepts from those discussions.  We are putting this out to our community as a starting point, and we want our community to engage with us to co-design this plan by sharing what they love about the plan, what doesn’t work, and anything that we may not have thought about yet. 

The full draft Urban Plan documents can be viewed in hardcopy at the Council office or online on Council’s website www.burnie.tas.gov.au/Council/Projects/2024/Burnie-City-Centre-Urban-Plan. A copy of this Plan can also be sent to you also in hard copy, by contacting Customer Services to request this.  The release of this information is accompanied by an informative video on the draft concepts, which can be viewed on Council’s website and YouTube channel @BurnieCouncil and accessed via a link on Council’s Facebook site.

The Council will now allow some time for the public to read and consider the draft concepts provided, before proceeding to the co-design stage of the project with the community in the coming weeks. Once the co-design stage is launched, the Council’s Executive Management Team (EMT) will be engaging with a variety of stakeholders to get their input and ideas as Council partners with the community to develop the concepts and plan.

Once EMT has heard from our community and considered all the feedback, the amended Draft Urban Plan will be taken to the Council for consideration by Councillors. Once they are satisfied with the Draft Urban Plan, we will come back out for a formal round of community consultation to check in to make sure that we are on the right track.

This is a new engagement method that has been implemented following the community’s feedback provided through the Community Engagement Framework process. You told us that you didn’t trust that when the Council came out to consult on matters, that you had a genuine ability to provide feedback because you thought the Council perhaps pre-determined matters. This new process will ensure you get a genuine opportunity to have your say, before Councillors consider the final Plan and make their decisions.

It is expected that the final iteration of the Urban Plan will be presented to the Council for endorsement in 2025, which will enable works to begin executing the plan in the 2024-25 financial year.

Initial work on this Draft Urban Plan enabled the Council to successfully lobby for funding during the recent State Government elections and we are grateful to have received funding of $17.3 million from the Tasmanian Government to commence implementing the Plan once developed. 

So, our community should be excited to not only participate in co-designing our shared vision for the CBD but to then see works begin, transforming the Plan into a reality.

With State Government funding now obtained, the Council is well placed to lobby for additional funding under the Commonwealth’s ‘Regional Precincts and Partnerships Program’, that could yield up to an additional $50m, to invest in executing our Urban Plan.  Now that would be a game-changer!