The Annual General Meeting was held last night. The committee for 2015-16 is shown on the About Us page. The Annual Report recorded that the focus through 2014-15 was on 14 February 2015, the date when the moratorium on government-sponsored development at Hawker Village expired. Around this time, we were advised that the ACT Government currently had no particular plans in regard to the Hawker Village and its car parks.
In line with the intention to constructively provide input for a master plan reflecting the community’s preferences, the Committee conducted a SWOT analysis of the submissions received in response to the previous draft master plan in order to identify what were seen as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the centre. The findings of the analysis will be useful in relation to any future proposals.
Over the past year, the committee has raised various maintenance issues around the Hawker precinct with the ACT Government in response to comments from members and other supporters of the association. The two most obvious results of these approaches include the removal of a dip in the footpath connecting the shops to Page via the underpass on Belconnen Way. That dip filled with water when it rained and covered a large area on both sides, affecting all traffic along the path. Secondly, the markings on the raised crossings were repainted to improve visibility.
Roads ACT has also advised that it will undertake works in the 2015-16 financial year to make the crossing from the medical centre compliant with the current standards for wheelchair access. We have drawn the Government’s attention to the problem of illegal dumping of clothes and furniture around the charity bins (which were re-located from the Springvale Drive car park to the area between the public toilets and Coniston Street), and this will require continued monitoring.
Other issues raised during the year included clarifying the responsibility of owners for maintenance of external areas of their lease and specific issues about maintenance of the public parts of private leases. In this context, we also wrote to the owner of the central building (which incorporates Rock Salt). On 1 April, we did a walk around the Hawker centre with Vicki Dunne MLA, who subsequently wrote to the Minister about concerns we had noted.
FoHV made two formal submissions this year, one to the ACCC inquiry into Coles’ purchase of four Supa IGA stores in Western Australia which involved similar issues to Woolworth’s purchase of the Hawker Supa IGA. The other submission was on the proposed 40 km/h precincts in Canberra’s group centres which, for Hawker, seemed to be satisfactory.
All FoHV correspondence is available on our Submissions page.
friends of hawker village 