Local Businesses overlooked by City of Sydney

BY JORDAN FERMANIS

The Pyrmont Ultimo Chamber of Commerce (PUCC) held an event on 28 July to reinforce the need for a business community in the City of Sydney.

PUCC President Lawrence Gibbons said that what Ultimo lacked was a proper shopping precinct and that council had flatly rejected to support new businesses.

“The problem is there is not a vision for creating a retail precinct on Harris St. In fact there is a long history of it not happening, for zoning reasons, for regulatory reasons, for I don’t like it reasons,” Mr Gibbons said.

The event was attended by Greg Fenwick, a representative from Newcastle City Council and Newcastle Now, a business association that has developed innovative business ideas for Newcastle City.

The event aimed to strengthen ties between the PUCC and other business associations whilst also to provide possible ideas for the City of Sydney to adopt.

Mr Gibbons said that as it currently stands, the City of Sydney has failed to develop a plan for with proper consolation from the business community.

“A local action plan for the village economy was never presented. In fact council now ends without any kind of plan for the local villages at all.”

“The problem is a lack of willingness to commit to the problems local small businesses face,” Mr Gibbons said.

Mr Gibbons also stated that it would be unwise to submit to ‘cronyism’ and depend upon the government for grants which is why a chamber of commerce is necessary.

“As a chamber of commerce we can’t just depend on the goodwill of government.”

“We don’t want to solely depend on grants,” Mr Gibbons said.

Also in attendance were representatives from the City of Sydney council. Councillor Linda Scott said that the innovations presented by Newcastle Now were a source of inspiration for the City.

“It’s telling that a global city like Sydney is looking to a fantastic innovative city like Newcastle to get some good ideas.”

“It’s my view that what makes a fantastic city is what is good for the people that live here, good for the people that work here and good for the people that want to start businesses in the City of Sydney,” Clr Scott said.

Councillor Christine Forster said that in her view, the council needed to be more forthright in achieving concrete outcomes for businesses.

“You have to have an environment where the businesses when they have an issue, they can talk to council and council responds.”

“The current Sydney council is great at making plans, it is just not very good at implementing outcomes and delivering outcomes for its business communities and it’s residents,” Clr Forster said.

Councillor Angela Vithoulkas from the Sydney Matters party spoke of the need for more organised business associations like the PUCC with suitable funding from the City of Sydney that met the needs of residents and businesses alike.

Whilst the Greens candidate for the City of Sydney Lindsay Johnston told the event the Greens were in favour of building business partnerships where the community can be brought together.

“Community, the residents, businesses, specialists need to form partnerships and we need to do this in precincts. I can see that if this concept gets off the ground in the City of Sydney and I would hope that I would be there 100% behind this.”

The PUCC says that is close to finalising the reopening of the Pyrmont growers market which ended due to Fairfax Media, the major sponsoring pulling the pin.

The PUCC is also eagerly awaiting the results on the number of businesses enrolled to vote for the upcoming City of Sydney elections which may be due to iniquitous council procedure.