Griffith CBD Strategy Community Consultation Update

Griffith CBD Strategy Community Consultation Update

Background

A priority of the Griffith CBD Strategy has been to conduct extensive community consultation across the city.  The consultation process continues to seek a wide and diverse range of perspectives to best inform the Strategy.  To date, consultation has included:

• Presenting issues and ideas to a number of Council committees, community groups and agencies
• Discussions with individual business owners and community representatives
• Facilitating professional and industry specific workshops
• Conducting and collating data from the CBD Strategy Survey
• Collating data from previous surveys, including the 2014 Community Survey and the 2013-14 Griffith Business Survey

Data collated from consultation will impact the Griffith CBD Strategy in various ways but primarily provide the Strategy with several focus areas.

Griffith CBD Strategy Survey

The Griffith CBD Strategy Survey as a brief survey to assess what the community perceive to be the issues facing the Griffith city centre.  The survey was a popular survey achieving 213 responses over a two month period during September and October 2014. 

Respondents identified the pedestrian environment (54%), quality of public seating (64%) and activities (63%) as primary issues facing the city centre.  (The percentages represent the number of poor and fair responses to the relevant survey statements).  Respondents also indicated that they would like to see improved paving surfaces and greater amount of landscaping in the city centre.

The survey also revealed that issues such as car parking and safety were less of a community concern, with over 61% of respondents believing the number of car parks in the city centre to be either excellent or good.

As has been the case in other surveys, issues of bicycle accessibility and parking, city activities and the appearance of entrances appeared heavily in surveys responses. 

 

    

Recommendation

From the data collated form the survey, it is proposed that the CBD Strategy focus on areas of accessibility, particularly addressing issues surrounding the pedestrian environment (quality paving, shade, beautification, connection and convenience) and cycle network (accessibility and amenities).  Further, that the Strategy places emphasis on better quality and variety of public seating and providing a greater number of public activities in the city centre (festivals, music, recreation, play).  Finally, the appearance of the city entrances and roundabouts should be considered in the Griffith CBD Strategy and future strategic planning (Griffith Entrance Strategy and Master Plan).