Newcastle City Council has backed away from plans to build a concrete skate bowl on the sand at South Newcastle beach, announcing it will review the bowl’s location.
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The council has been under fire from coastal experts, engineers, surfers, former bureaucrats and beachgoers since launching the project in the middle of last year.
Lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes said on Thursday that the council was aware of the community’s concerns and would look to address the feedback in a design review.
She said state legislation governing coastal development which had come into effect in July had created uncertainty around the planning pathway for the bowl.
“Given this uncertainty and the community concern, the sensible action from council is to re-examine the location of the skate bowl with a view to potentially delivering the project within the existing footprint,” she said.
“This would enable the skate bowl to proceed but without it being located on the beach itself.”
The skate bowl is one aspect of an $11 million plan, funded jointly by the council and state government, for the next stage of the Bathers Way coastal walk.
The council said 191 of 335 respondents to an online survey had opposed the project, citing the bowl’s protrusion onto the beach as their main concern.
Opponents of the bowl had organised an Australia Day rally in which they planned to mark out its perimeter on the sand, but they cancelled the event on Thursday.
The Newcastle Herald reported in December that one of the world’s leading experts on beaches, Sydney University coastal geomorphologist Professor Andrew Short, had written to the council deriding the skate bowl as “unsightly, inappropriate and hazardous”.
His view was backed by Peter Evans, a coastal engineer with 39 years’ experience in NSW government agencies, who said the project had left the coastal management profession “incredulous” at the NSW Coastal Conference in Merimbula in November.
Mr Evans congratulated the council and lord mayor on Thursday for “listening and responding to the community’s legitimate concerns”.
The skate bowl’s location was also opposed by Newcastle Surf Life Saving Club.
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