Interviewer: Frank Heimans,
            for Baulkham Hills Shire Council

Date of Interview: 22 June 2007

Transcription: Glenys Murray, July 2007

So what is your present position with Landcom then?

I have a number of roles at Landcom I operate loosely under the term of the Development Director. So the development that I am helping direct is the Rouse Hill project, The New Rouse Hill. But I also because of my background provide general town planning advice to all Landcom staff on the projects that they're working on. I ‘m also in charge of the Sustainability Policy Unit at Landcom so we’re looking to always increase the sustainability elements of our projects and so my team and myself provide again across Landcom support to the various other project teams on sustainability issues that they could be able to employ.

Now you spent ten years with Blacktown Council before you had your present position. What were the challenges in your job there?

Blacktown Council was a really interesting place to work at. It was a very diverse Council, it was really like two councils. There was a developing part of Blacktown which was a more affluent part of Blacktown and then there was a more established part of Blacktown which was still developing but not as rapidly as the Eastern portion of Blacktown. The challenges there were coping with growth. Since the 1940’s really post war Blacktown had been a place where growth and development had occurred. Initially it was along the railway lines, around the railway stations and along the major arterial roads. Through the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s land was released in the Western part of the city mainly and then in the 1990’s that land release programme moved to the Eastern portion of the city and to its Northern part. Part of the North West Sector and again just the challenges of keeping up with that growth at different times Blacktown was the fastest growing LGA in NSW and one of the fastest in Australia. With average increases of between 5,000 and 8,000 people each year that’s a fairly rapid rate of growth. There are other council areas that have had higher absolute numbers than that at different times but just coping with that number of people coming in. The demands that they place on Local Government for services allowing for sensible distribution of those people across the city, making sure they’ve got the services they need. They were the biggest challenges that Blacktown had. Doing all of that in a way that was financially responsible.

There was a site in Blacktown that was being considered for five thousand dwellings wasn’t it in a former quarry. What can you tell me about that?

Yeah that was one of the projects I worked on as a relatively young town planner. That was in the Woodcroft area,

Detail of activity surrounding The New Rouse Hill (Clockwise: Castlebrooke Cemetary, Schofields Road, Ironbark Ridge PS, Beaumont Hills, Kellyville Ridge) April 2006

What’s the current population now of the Rouse Hill area and what number do you think it is predicted to rise by say 2020?

The area surrounding The New Rouse Hill probably has a population around eighty odd thousand people at present. Really like all things it depends on where you draw your boundaries and what you consider to be part of that Rouse Hill area. If we can consider the area that started to develop for urban uses in the middle of the 1990’s as being the Rouse Hill area then there’s a current population of about eighty odd thousand people and by 2020 it won’t be fully developed in all likelihood but the regional population is ultimately expected to be something around two hundred and fifty thousand people and it would be getting pretty close to that. There would probably be about two hundred thousand on current projections in that area.

So which suburbs are you including in that immediate area that you’re talking about?

It’s a broad sweep the majority of that area lies in the City of Blacktown and it’s in general terms the area north of the M7 motorway and includes suburbs such as Parklea, Stanhope Gardens, Kellyville, Kellyville Ridge, Riverstone, Vineyard, Schofields and Marsden Park. So that’s a fairly broad sweep of the City of Blacktown. A little bit out of the City of Hawkesbury the suburb of Vineyard spills over into Hawkesbury, Vineyard and Mulgrave. Then over in Baulkham Hills its suburbs such as again Kellyville that’s a shared suburb between Blacktown and Baulkham Hills, Rouse Hill, Beaumont Hills, North Kellyville, Box Hill and Annangrove.

Is the North West (Norwest) Business Park part of that?

Yes North West (Norwest) Business Park is in fact part of that and so that includes places such as Bella Vista, Bella Vista Waters and as far south as that freeway reservation where it cuts through West Baulkham Hills area.

Quite a large area?

Yes it is.

Now what is your brief as far as The New Rouse Hill development is concerned?

Landcom, who I work for at present, is representing the government’s interests in the development of the New Rouse Hill. The site is owned by the government. The Department of Planning owns the site and we’re effectively acting as the Department of Planning’s Development Manager. So we’re providing the development expertise to the Department of Planning and helping manage with them the joint venture partners of Lend Lease and GPT (General Property Trust) who are doing the development of The New Rouse Hill.

So what stake does Landcom have in this whole development?

We have a financial stake. We’ve contributed money to the Department of Planning to allow us to share in some of the profits from the development.

Aspects of the Mungerie Park Course still present on the corner of Commercial and Windsor Roads (April 2006)

So what was that vision that was developed twenty years ago by the government? Can you tell me about that?

The North West Sector was identified as an area for Sydney’s future urban expansion as far back as “The Sydney Region Outline Plan” in 1968. A circle was drawn over the northwest area and said this is a future area for Sydney’s expansion. Nothing much then happened for about fifteen years and then the early part of the 1980’s the Department of Planning went and purchased land on which the Mungerie Park Golf Course sat on the corner of Commercial Road and Windsor Road. The decision was taken at that time that, that site would be the regional centre for the northwest sector. Shortly after that the necessary planning studies to work out how land uses would be allocated and so on in that area were commenced. It’s rolled on from there.

Now there was earlier development in Rouse Hill when they started building the first houses?

So what happened was there was a planning framework that was developed over the next ten years from roughly the early part of the eighties to the early part of the nineties. In 1991 the local governments of Blacktown and Baulkham Hills each rezoned approximately fifteen hundred hectares of land in their respective local government areas to open up the first areas for development in The Rouse Hill Development Area. Over on the Baulkham Hills side that land included what is now developing as The New Rouse Hill. It is only just been these last few years that there has been a sufficient impetus and it’s been economically viable to develop the land for the regional centre. It needed for its residential catchment to develop to a certain level before it would be financially viable to do what Lend Lease and GPT are now doing.

There were some houses built at Rouse Hill in the 1990’s which some people consider was not an appropriate development. Tell me a bit about that?

Yes, the Baulkham Hills part of the Rouse Hill Development Area is a more fragmented area than the Blacktown portion and whereas on the Blacktown side the Landcom holdings were the first developed and they were fairly contiguous with the existing urban area. So the expansion of services and infrastructure and transport and those sorts of things on the Blacktown side whilst challenging was able to be done in a fairly orderly and sensible manner. Unfortunately over on the Baulkham Hills side, three major land owners that were starting off the initial development there. One was at the extreme southern end of the area, one was at the extreme northern end of the area and one was roughly in the middle. So there were three development fronts that opened upon the Baulkham Hills side. That led to a lot of pressures for Baulkham Hills Council and for the local and regional community in coping with development on such a large front. So services such as schools and so on. Whereas on the Blacktown side there was a consolidated development front and so a school was able to be provided within the first five years because a threshold population was met. Roughly the same rate of development was occurring over on the Baulkham Hills side but it was spread one third, one third, one third. So it took much longer for there to be a critical mass sufficient to support those higher order services such as schools or even shops over on the Baulkham Hills side. It meant that existing services were stretched that much harder.

Was there also a problem with transport and roads?

Yes transport and roads are a difficult thing in that part of the world. There’s really only two or three major roads that run through the Rouse Hill area and they’re on a roughly north south alignment. That’s Windsor Road, Old Windsor Road and a couple of other minor roads. Much of the traffic demand is north south in that area. Say from out in Hawkesbury area down towards Parramatta or towards the city via the freeways and other arterial roads. As development occurred what effectively were rural roads ended up having to support urban development. Unfortunately the roads weren’t upgraded or other forms of public transport weren’t provided to take the pressure off the roads at the same rate that development was occurring.

Tell me something about the plans for The New Rouse Hill development?

The New Rouse Hill is what we call a mixed use development. It is a town centre and supporting residential area. The development site is just a little over one hundred and twenty odd hectares. It comprises a mixed use town centre which will include retailing, commercial land uses. It will include community land uses such as the Council’s library and community buildings. It will include a range of services such as health, medical and financial services. A range of public open spaces as well in the Town Centre area. There will be a supporting area which will include some further commercial and retail development. An expansion area for the town centre as it matures over time. There will be residential flats in the Town Centre and then as you move out of the Town Centre into the residential land that surrounds it you will come across town houses and villas and duplexes, some more residential flats closer to the Town Centre through to traditional detached housing allotments.

Civic Way (artist's impression October 2002)

The concept itself isn’t that new of having a dense town centre and then having land uses and residential densities decrease as you move away from that centre. In terms of how some of the elements of The New Rouse Hill and particularly of the Town Centre have been put together we think yes it is an example of something that probably hasn’t been done before. What we’re talking about here is building a regional centre from day one on a greenfield’s site which is in it self a difficult task. The thing that we think probably sets it aside from most other greenfield town centre is that ours is not centred on an enclosed mall but on a main street. What we’re trying to do is have all the convenience and comfort and safety and so on that might be associated with a mall development, but which is a very anti social development. It turns its back on the residential areas that surround it. It puts up large walls and it privatises its internal space. What we’re trying to do is explode that and have it as a public place, with a public main street and allow for those casual and delightful things that a town centre should allow for, the chance to meet your neighbours and bump into them and happily meet them on the street and allow for that sort of social interaction which is really important.

What planning principles is this development based on at Rouse Hill?

The government’s view was if the government was going to do development at New Rouse Hill or work with others to do development at New Rouse Hill then we should address the problems that had plagued the North West area up until that point. Issues such as early provision of services very important to us. The other thing that is probably the underpinning tenant of the New Rouse Hill is the drive for sustainability that the centre has. That’s present is terms of simply how we have congregated or grouped land uses together to make sure it is an efficient use of land. That people can go to the Town Centre and do multiple tasks instead of having to jump into their car and drive many kilometres to do multiple tasks. But also in terms on how it is designed, how passive solar heating of homes and of the town centre itself, how it uses water and electricity and manages that demand. They’re all fundamental tenants that are underpinning the design.

Range of active streets and small intimate squares (artist's impression October 2002)

So is there an existing model somewhere in the world on which this New Rouse Hill development is based?

At the moment you say no, but someone could point to something that proves you wrong. The Australian retailing trends follow those of the United States fairly closely. So in the 1950’s and 1960’s when malls were being established in the United States, malls started being established here about five or six years afterwards. As those malls got bigger and bigger and bigger in the 1980’s in the United States so they did here as well. The United States has had a lot of difficulty in certain places with those malls now and their being redeveloped to make them more like we’re making The New Rouse Hill. I guess we saw that trend in the United States and said “ well wait on let’s not go the next step and make the mega, mega mall and then have to dismantle it, let’s do what their doing there now and let’s try to invent this as a main street centre and see if is works”. There is really great examples of good town centres right across Australia and country towns are really good town centres, if they’re good and healthy local economies. What we’re doing really is trying to encompass the best of the traditional country town element with the main street as well as then the convenience and comfort of an enclosed mall. To that extent I don’t know that there is an example.

What’s the projected budget for the whole thing?

At this stage we think the total development will be something in the order of one point five billion dollars of value at full development.

Wow it’s not small bikkies is it?

No it’s a very large amount of money.

Now can you take me through the process of this development with chronological dates if you have them for The New Rouse Hill? From say the selection of the site, to the plans drawn up for development, to expressions of interest being recorded, all those sort of things?

The site was purchased by the government in the early 1980’s towards the end of the 1980’s about 1987 a regional environmental study was done for the north west sector, which identified the Rouse Hill area as the area which would accommodate approximately a quarter of a million people over a thirty or thirty five year time frame. The local environmental plans then to facilitate the first stage of development were approved by the State Government in 1991 took about eighteen months then for the first development to get on the ground. It was the middle of 1993 that the initial stages of development started to roll out on both the Blacktown and Baulkham Hills side of the Rouse Hill area. Then there was a period of fairly consolidated and rapid development in each of the council areas picking up on the residential boom of the 1990’s and the early part of the 2000’s. Towards the end of the 1990’s the State Government, the Department of Planning as the owner of the land took a look at its side and said “well we’re starting to get now sufficient development in our catchment that we might like to think about how we would choose to develop this area”. In 1998 the Department of Planning commenced some studies in concert with Baulkham Hills Shire Council to look at how the area would develop. That culminated in a rezoning plan for The Rouse Hill town centre it self in 2001. It was about that stage that the State Government asked Landcom to help it in the next step of the process. The State Government, the Department of Planning doesn’t have a great deal of experience in doing land development. Our initial role was to advise on what was the best thing to do with the site at this stage. Would it be simply having obtained the rezoning to put a “for sale” sign on it and to sell the site to whom so ever would be the best party or would it be to take a longer term view. Take a stake in the development and see the plans through. Our advice to the Department of Planning was to do the latter, which they thought was also not a bad idea, and so in 2002 we organised for an expression of interest to the general development industry to see who would like to develop The New Rouse Hill. In 2003 Lend Lease and GPT were selected as our preferred tenderer. There was a period then consummating the deal and all of the legal drafting and contract documentation to support that. Then in March of last year, 2006, the first sod being turned at the Town Centre site to where we are today where were a few months out of that Town Centre site being opened to the public.

It’s an incredibly rapid progress, I mean the last stages?

It has been yes, particularly since the deal we struck with Lend Lease and GPT there were a number of pre conditions that needed to be met before we had a real deal. It took some time for those pre conditions to be met, but they were met in February of last year. Since then they’ve built a town centre which is really amazing.

Aerial view of Mungerie Park homestead (centre top). Ironbark Ridge Public School in the foreground. (April 2006)

The Council’s rezoning plan was a good plan it allowed for a wide range of land uses in the Town Centre and it didn’t have a lot of controls in terms of limiting floor space or limiting the heights of buildings. It’s been our subsequent design process that has put limits on those things. The Council’s plans though were all predicated on a hope that what had happened traditionally in the North West sector, which was people well ahead of infrastructure and services wouldn’t happen on this site. That’s been what’s driven both us and Lend Lease GPT in doing what we have done on the site. It would have been easy to do the first stages as residential development at The New Rouse Hill. But the very first thing that opened at New Rouse Hill was a primary school and a child care centre. The second major thing that will open will be the Town Centre and then the people will come.

That’s a little bit different to the way it’s usually done isn’t it?

It is but that was one of requirements in the contract. That was one thing the government wanted to see happen. And we’ve been very fortunate that Lend Lease and GPT share exactly that same attitude. I think that’s been a great meeting of minds on that point?

Was there some initial scepticism within the Baulkham Hills Shire Council in the early stage about this new development given the history of the site?

Just a little. The Council had that unfortunate legacy of the development occurring in the Rouse Hill area and the services to lag dreadfully behind the demand for them by the residents. So to one extent or another, the government was seen to be a part of that problem in terms of its own infrastructure budgets and its own allocations of funding for upgrading of infrastructure, so the Council was fairly sceptical that a government development wouldn’t just add to the problem and that there might be just empty rhetoric and not much when you got behind it all. We were of course very conscious of that perception and have worked very hard with our development partners to make sure that it remained just a perception. I think now if you were to talk to the Councillors as you have done in this exercise I think generally the Council be of the opinion that its actually been a pretty good development and the rhetoric was more than rhetoric and it was followed through in actions and deeds.

It’s a rather ambitious scheme isn’t it, I guess. How’s the Council feeling about what’s happening on site there now?

I think the Council is first of all very supportive of the development and to the Council’s credit right the way through the process in the stages of scepticism has still been very supportive of the project. But they’ve been very firm in the aspiration and desire for what it should be. And that is a regional centre for the north west of Sydney and that it should not display those things which had be leagued development previously in that area. The Council’s, I think, quite excited about how the vision had translated to the ground. Council was very involved in helping us develop that vision before we went and selected Lend Lease and GPT to be our joint development partners. So the Council has had a number of very important things that it wanted to see happen on the ground. Such as the provision of a site for its own library which is now in the processes of being built and will be open in March of next year. It’s been exercises such as that that have helped us I think build a good relationship at the government level with the Council. It’s gone from strength to strength now that we have out development partners in there doing a fantastic development. Coming up out of the ground there’s nothing like yellow, shiny machinery on site pushing dirt around and scaffolding and concrete trucks to put to bed concerns that it might be just simply empty rhetoric and nothing more than a mirage. So the commitment and dedication that our joint partners have shown, Lend Lease and GPT, in doing the development of The New Rouse Hill I think has been the, I won’t say the final nail in the coffin of scepticism for the Council, because I think the Council will always be healthily sceptical about development to make sure it meets their standards and aspirations. I think it has certainly been a good thing for developing a strong relationship between all of the parties and the Council.

Bicycle tracks and walkways linking Town Centre to residential area (artist's impression October 2002)

The Town Centre is very much like an internalised shopping mall except it doesn’t have the four walls around the edges of it. The simple principles of a successful shopping mall are that you have a number of anchor tenants and you put them at either end of your shopping centre and then you spread out the speciality shops between them. The anchors draw people in and the fact that you put them at either end of the centre encourages people to walk between one and the other and in so doing they pass all of the secondary and smaller retailers. The New Rouse Hill is designed with that principle in mind; there are the four major anchors from the Coles, Woolworths, Big W and Target and they are put in one each in a quadrant. The quadrants are defined by the external perimeter roads which will get you into the underground car parking and then through the middle of the Town Centre runs Main Street which divides it into half, east west and then the north south road is Civic Way which divides the halves into half again which creates the quadrants. The quadrants then contain one each of those major anchors. Sitting out and linking the quadrants, breaking the quadrants up again into eighths roughly is a pedestrian loop. It is what it says it’s a pedestrian loop that takes you round the entire centre within which cars are not allowed. It’s a pedestrian environment, partly covered, partly open. It’s designed to look and feel like the little Melbourne lanes and streets do. To have that element of surprise and delight and unexpected things whilst you’re experiencing the town centre as a pedestrian and it ties the whole thing together.

How did you come up with that idea? I mean what sort of research was done to come to that?

We had the basic of that idea but to give Lend Lease and GPT credit, it’s principally their idea in how it was executed. We said to them that we wanted the Town Centre to include roads that were trafficable. Roads that cars could drive up and down. We think there are all sorts of benefits for that including allowing for surveillance of areas perhaps after hours or when pedestrian activity might not be quite as high as what it is during the day. The other requirement was that there needed to be areas where pedestrians would have the ultimate priority. That there would be no conflict with cars, we had the idea of what we wanted to achieve but we left largely to Lend Lease and their very clever people that they had working with them, Lend Lease and GPT, to work out how to design that. So the pedestrian loop was an integral part of the design that they came back to us with, as one of four parties that were invited to lodge a tender with government for the development of the site. Theirs was the best solution in terms of how the Town Centre was constructed. We felt that their urban design solution was outstanding.

So what are the transport arrangements to and from The New Rouse Hill development for say, cars, buses and rail?

There’s a fairly well developed car network in the area already. That said The New Rouse Hill is going to put more cars on the road so we’re upgrading Windsor Road out of the front of the Centre from four lanes to six lanes and that will be open the day that the Centre opens. That’s nearing completion now those works. There are then intersections with that upgraded Windsor Road into the Town Centre and also to the surrounding residential areas that form part of the New Rouse Hill development as well. Bearing in mind that there is eighteen hundred dwellings that are part of this development, it’s not just the Town Centre it’s the residential development as well. In terms of bus transportation Rouse Hill sits at the end of the Parramatta rapid bus transit way link (North-West T-way) which is a dedicated bus way that runs between Rouse Hill and Parramatta and picks up people along the way. Then in the fullness of time the North West Rail Link is also proposed to end at Rouse Hill. To have the station at Rouse Hill and the current planning suggests that that will be up and running by about 2017. When the Centre opens there will be a rapid bus transit system and about ten years after it opens with any luck there will be a railway station.

How will they be integrated all those particular transport arrangements?

The Town Centre had been designed knowing that there will be all these things happening. The interaction of the Town Centre with the transport has been very important in the design. Eventually when the rail arrives there will be an integrated bus rail interchange, a smaller version of what you see at places like Parramatta. But probably a slightly larger version that you see at places like Epping where buses will come in drop people off and there will be a below ground railway station and an interchange there between buses and trains at that location.

Landscaping is suited to the area (artist's impression October 2002)

Let’s talk a bit about the environmental issues that this development is concerned with, measure to improve its ecological footprint and so on, can you tell me about that?

Dealing with the environment and the sustainability of the development has been at the heart of first of all government’s tendering process, and then consequently at the heart of the design process undertaken by our partners. During the time that that design has been worked up and now being implemented Sydney has gone through one of its worse droughts if not the worst drought on record. So the attention that we have paid to those issues I think the importance of it has been demonstrated in what’s happened in that time.

The New Rouse Hill is designed to use less water than a traditional development of a similar size to use much less electricity and energy and to use passive solar design. To use the warmth of the sun to its best extent and to use cooling breezes and orientation of buildings take advantage of those during the warmer months. As a result the Town Centre for The New Rouse Hill, our current estimate that it will consume twenty five percent less energy and resources. Its ecological footprint will be twenty five percent less than a traditional centre of the same size which we think is a great result.

Do you have a figure also for the amount of water you might save?

Water reduction in the Town Centre itself could be as much as eighty percent less than a similar centre. We benefit a little bit because we do have a recycled water system that we are required to hook into. That’s a recycled water system that will eventually service all of the North West sector. We do have a bit of a running start on some of the sustainability as far as water is concerned, even so the design of the Town Centre has been done in a way the minimises water use even more through simple things. Like making sure the landscaping is suited to the area, through things like designing streets so that when the water does fall on the streets its run off to gutters goes through tree pits and so the trees that are in the streets are passively watered in that way rather than having to turn on a tap and water them. First time that this has been done and it’s a GPT initiative and a terrific one, shopping centres need to test their water safety systems once every number of months. When they do that all of the water gets flushed out straight to the street and disappears, GPT have found a way to capture that, put it in a holding tank and recycle it and reuse it in the Town Centre. There’s also a one hundred and fifty thousand litre tank in the basement of one of the car parks and that also captures water and uses it around the Town Centre for watering and for hosing and for cleaning functions in the external environment.

That’s all new I haven’t heard of that before?

No a lot of that stuff is ground breaking and full credit goes to our development partners for coming up with those ideas. They knew that we wanted them to be a bench mark and a leader in sustainability they had that goal to work towards. The ways in which they have achieved it are really quite astounding.

Have there been any indigenous issues to contend with on this development?

In Western Sydney there is quite often issues that need to be considered in the development of land related to Aboriginal heritage of the area. Rouse Hill is no different, Caddies Creek runs through roughly the middle of the development and Caddies Creek for the Aboriginal people was an important meeting place. There are quite a number of sites within Caddies Creek that have very high evidence of previous Aboriginal occupation and in particular grinding grooves along the creek. Where the sandstone rock has been used by the Aboriginal people to sharpen tools and to make tools so Silcrete which is a very flaky rock and not found in the Cumberland Plain has been brought by Aboriginal people from outside of the Cumberland Plain into the area presumably for trading or as part of Aboriginal people’s migratory patterns at the time. Silcrete has then been manufactured into tools in Caddies Creek area and then sharpened in the grinding grooves. There has been quite a number of grinding grooves found along Caddies Creek as well as literally thousands of Silcrete flakes which is a result of this quarrying and tool making process.

So have you consulted with the Aboriginal people there?

Legislatively we’re required to do that anyway, we have to do that as part of the development. But again Lend Lease and GPT I think have gone certainly further than many might in managing that consultation. In identifying the right people to talk to in the Aboriginal community, so they've actively engaged with four groups and two individuals people who’ve identified themselves as having some connection with the area. And those people who’ve been involved with the formation of plans for the area, they are being consulted on an ongoing basis as the development occurs. They’ve assisted us in the stripping and moving of topsoil where most of the Silcrete fragments were found. They’ve assisted us in that process in identifying things that should have been salvaged from that topsoil. And they will be consulted further as we move into helping interpret the site, looking at information boards along the creek that highlight the importance of the grinding grooves, explaining the Aboriginal prehistory of the area.

Can you tell me something about the financial arrangements for The New Rouse Hill what will the different partners which I guess are the Department of Planning, Landcom, Lend Lease and GPT contribute to it? What will be their respective stakes in the project then?

I can’t go into the exact financial arrangement because that’s part of the contract. But I can describe in fairly simple terms what the basis of the contact or the deal is. Government owns the land and government has contributed land to the development. We are then in partnership with Lend Lease and GPT to procure development on that land. The two inputs for development are land plus capital, we’re providing the land Lend Lease and GPT are providing the capital and so from that a town centre or houses are built. They are sold to the end consumer. In the case of the town centre it will be to GPT but in the case of individual houses it could be you and I. Then according to various formulas that we have in the contract depending on what sort of a land use it is then the money from that sale is split differently between the various partners. So the government takes a share for recognising its contribution of land in the first instance and the developer Lend Lease GPT take a share recognising their contribution of capital to the project in order to get it to happen. So in very simple terms that’s the way the deal works.

April 2006 work commenced on T-way along Windsor Road - Looking in a North West direction with Rouse Hill Village development in the background

It’s a bit of a mix really. The government has helped pay for some of that. The bus transit ways (North-West T-way) by and large were paid for by government. However one of the conditions of the Rouse Hill contract is that the bus transit way for its length at the frontage of the Rouse Hill site, that is paid for by the developer and handed over to government at conclusion for operation. So there’s one instance where the developer has contributed to, what is in other places government expenditure. Similarly the upgrading of Windsor Road a portion of that is being met by State Government, a portion of that is being met by the RTA, a portion of that is being met by Landcom and a portion of that is being met by the developers. Again there is many complex and boring formulas that sit behind that and apportion that cost between the parties. That partnership extends to how infrastructure is funded as well.

Now Landcom of course is one of the project managers in this whole thing isn’t it or is it the project manager?

We are the Project Manager on behalf of government and so the developers also have their Project Managers for the construction of the Town Centre. The Project Manager is Bovis Lend Lease a part of the Lend Lease development entity, Lend Lease Corporation. So their managing the development of the Town Centre on behalf of GPT. The Delphin part of Lend Lease will manage the development of the residential precincts on behalf of the Lend Lease GPT joint venture. At any one time there are four different egos or entities inside the tent two on the government side, two on the private sector side facilitating the development that happens at Rouse Hill.

So does Landcom have a continuing role in the project after the whole thing is constructed?

The government’s role will ultimately conclude in the project either when the last block of land is sold to the last purchaser or at some time before that. If we elect to say “well look all the things that government wanted to achieve, have been achieved. There’s probably not a lot of point in us hanging around in this project”. Then we can go to the developer and say “well we’re thinking we might exit” and we’ll talk about how that might occur. We wouldn’t see ourselves as having a continuing role. Our role has principally been about setting up the vision, setting up the project on behalf of government. Finding someone that’s capable of delivering that vision then working with them in its initial phases to make sure we’re all on the same page and make sure that vision is delivered in the way that government had envisaged it. There will come a time and it might be five years, it might be eight years or it might be ten years. I suspect there will probably come a time when government will stand back and say “well we’ve achieved everything that we wanted to achieve here or most of it and we’re confident that we can put arrangements in place to make sure that the rest of it is achieved”. We might choose at that time to exit the project.

There will be shops out in the open (artist's impression October 2002)

Yes I think we have. It’s a really difficult thing to explain and people who maybe one day will listen to this oral history and it might sound like a confused recollection or recounting of what is Rouse Hill. Because it’s a development that will continue to occur and continue to grow and we’re really in the initial stage of it now, but we do believe that it is a benchmark. It is a benchmark that is really difficult to explain and so we expect that inside of twelve months we’re going to be knocked over by people from all over Australia and hopefully internationally coming to have a look at the New Rouse Hill to see what it has done for sustainability. To see how successful it is. To see that you don’t need to internalise all of your public spaces in a traditional mall sense in order to create an environment that shoppers feel safe and comfortable in. We think it will be a bench mark we’ve had a difficult job explaining the project to people and continue to do so. We’ve not been very successful in any of the awards we’ve entered it in and we think that it’s such a difficult thing to explain that the proof of the pudding actually is in turning up and having a look at it. When the centre is formally opened in a little less than a years time I think the value and the originality and the sheer scale of what’s been achieved will be evident at that stage.

Well coming to the end of my questions. Is there something else that you want to mention that we haven’t covered in the interview?

There are two things, most of our discussion here has been about the Town Centre and that is obviously the thing that is most in your face about Rouse Hill at present. It’s the thing that you see when you drive past on Windsor Road and you couldn’t miss it it’s such a large development. It’s important to remember that The New Rouse Hill isn’t just about the Town Centre it’s a very important part of it. There’s also close to a billion dollars of residential development that will occur as part of The New Rouse Hill as well. That development will be home to four and a half thousand people so we’ve got a really important job ahead of us in making sure that the environment that we’re putting those people into is an environment that they can be proud of and will suit their needs and their aspirations. The journey’s really only just starting. The other thought that I’d really like to emphasise is that I think the Rouse Hill is a private, public partnership and PPP’s have had a bad rap recent times because they haven’t gone well. I never want to speak too early but I think this is a good example of how the private sector and government can work together where our objectives and ideals are aligned. Where our aspirations are the same, it’s a great example of how private sector know how can be applied to government sector planning and vision, where the result of it is really something that hopefully everybody can be really proud of.