State Significant Development Application (SSDA) Progress
The State Significant Development Application (SSDA) for the Hunter Indoor Sports Centre continues to move forward. Following the public exhibition phase in late 2024, we received submissions from various stakeholders, including government agencies, community groups, and local residents, requesting further information.
Over the past three months, our project team has been reviewing these submissions and preparing responses as required. Some require simple clarifications, while others involve additional planning, design, and modelling work. We anticipate finalising our responses by June this year.
Once submitted, an independent planning panel will assess the application, a process that could take up to six months and is likely to include further activities such as public information sessions. This means we may not receive an outcome on our application until the end of 2025. While we understand the wait is frustrating, we remain committed to diligently following the process and ensuring the facility contributes something to all members of the Hunter community.
Exploring Potential Partnerships
Alongside the SSDA process, we have been progressing discussions with key stakeholders, including local government, other indoor sports organisation administrators, and community groups who are also desperately awaiting a multi-purpose indoor facility for the region. Although this project has been a long journey for the members of Newcastle Basketball, these conversations have reinforced the overwhelming need for a new indoor sports facility in the Hunter region.
The lack of such a venue continues to result in missed opportunities for our region to host not just major Basketball events, but other major sporting and community events. Not only would this new facility provide a suitable space for us to operate, a new facility would attract thousands of visitors and provide significant economic and community benefits because of the major event hosting capacity it would bring to the region.
The recent announcement that Newcastle will again host Matilda’s, Wallabies and Rugby World Cup games in 2027 is a fantastic example of our regions abilities to attract the best teams and games. However, our lack of suitable indoor sports facilities in the region mean these types of opportunities will not be completely maximised as we are unable to provide suitable preparation facilities for these high performance teams.
Newcastle Basketball will continue to pursue our discussions with any stakeholders that would benefit from this community facility to explore the benefits they would bring to the project, and most importantly we will continue to pursue our application for the construction of the Hunter Indoor Sports Centre, as there is no doubt, the need for a facility like this is long overdue.
Further updates on the progress of the project will be provided in the coming months.