Sensational-Adelaide.com

rogue wrote:^^ Apartments coming right up.....

Jim wrote:The old Yatla prison will be an excellent site or some housing and reserves in the gorges. I just hope they completely bulldoze the old prison at Yalta and it does not become another lame museum. If the original building could be renovated for a worthwhile use (not a museum) that would be different, but bulldoze the rest.

A MULTI-MILLION dollar equine precinct and 3500-home residential development at Murray Bridge is set to become a major hub for thoroughbred racing in SA.

Murray Bridge Racing Club has released plans to buy 800ha of farming land next to the South-Eastern Freeway to build a new racetrack and training complex as well as creating a 350ha residential area with a retail and community centre. This is equal to an area 15 times the size of Cheltenham racecourse

More than 30 per cent of the total site will be dedicated to open space.

The development still has to gain State Government approval. However, it is envisaged that within three to four years a new state-of-the-art racecourse with grass and synthetic tracks, along with at least 50ha of horse-training facilities will be completed.

Murray Bridge Racing Club chairman Reg Nolan said once the new racecourse was operational, the present track adjoining the golf course also would be redeveloped.

"In the longer term, the plan will see the development of 3500 houses as part of a quality residential development," he said.

"It really has the potential to become the jewel in the crown for racing in SA."

Thoroughbred Racing SA will act as guarantor for a $5 million loan after the provincial club signed an agreement with the state's controlling body last week.

The agreement was to buy the land in February offering the existing racecourse and farmland as security. The planned equine precinct will feature new and fully resourced race and training tracks, multi-purpose function and spectator facilities, as well as a specialised estate for trainers and their horses.

Environmental features for the scheme include on-site water storage, wetland and water recycling. TRSA chairman Philip Bentley said: "We anticipate that Murray Bridge eventually will be the largest thoroughbred training centre in the state."

Prince George wrote:These forums have a strange dual personality. On the one hand there's the higher, denser, count-cranes-in-the-CBD threads, and then there's the big land release in regional town threads, or the Northern Connector one, which seem to be celebrating the opportunity to spread our population yet thinner again.

Without having a real plan in front of you, it's too early to tell exactly what's going to happen up there, but at 350 ha split between 3500 homes that's an average lot size of about 700 sq m (allowing about 30% of the area for roads). So it looks like we're going to get another big, flat 'burb, only this one will be located 80km from Adelaide, and on the other side of a mountain range. That's twice as far away as Gawler or Mt Barker, and they're already beyond the limits of where our growth should be heading.

Does the town have employment opportunities to support the people who are going to live in this area (whose houses we can safely assume will be cheap by Adelaide's standards, but expensive by Murray Bridge's)? No, the majority of them will be people who are working in Adelaide, so we get to add another couple of thousand daily commuters to the highway. I can almost hear them bleating now "Oh, won't somebody please help save us from high petrol prices?" Look at the tears welling up in their eyes, how can we not build them an expensive transit link, or subsidise their petrol costs? Surely they could not have predicted this was going to happen *sob sob*

And does Murray Bridge have the infrastructure capacity for another 3500 homes? Probably not, so it's going to require sewage, water, gas, electrical, communications upgrades, and probably work on the connecting roads as well. Will that get paid for by the developer and the new homeowners? No, that'll come from the State government, which means from the larger tax-base in Adelaide. So the city effectively subsidises the whole development. And we haven't included schools or public health either.

Let's be realistic, this isn't really about a boom for Murray Bridge. The real story here is that the racing club wants a new racecourse, but the track can't pay for itself, so they're going to bankroll the whole thing by making a residential development as well. That development in turn gets a subsidy from the government (ie the taxpayers), so in effect we get to make a gift of a state-of-the-art racing track for the minority of people who care about such things.

Wilfy 2007 wrote:Good Morning,

So is this cause for a campaign for a Regular rail Passenger service from Murray Bridge to Adelaide?

Any thoughts?

AG wrote:

Wilfy 2007 wrote:Good Morning,

So is this cause for a campaign for a Regular rail Passenger service from Murray Bridge to Adelaide?

Any thoughts?

Assuming an average of 2.5 persons per household and an increase of 3500 homes, I don't really think that 8750 extra people in a town over 100km from Adelaide by itself truly warrants a rail service. Does anyone know of any figures that exist that could show how many people travel into the Adelaide metropolitan area from the areas east of Adelaide? I don't imagine there would be many people from Murray Bridge who would travel into Adelaide on a daily basis.

Wilfy 2007 wrote:So is this cause for a campaign for a Regular rail Passenger service from Murray Bridge to Adelaide?

Any thoughts?

skyliner wrote:As ALL south east traffic goes through MB it then makes enhanced rail services to MB as well.This can be capitalised on by making the through passenger trains drop off/pick up at MB as well as Mt Barker.(depending on scheduled timing of course).