Verdun Road extension canned
A new medical facility and fast food outlet will be built in a prominent spot off Adelaide Road, Murray Bridge instead.
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Imagine traffic lights in the middle of Murray Bridge’s fast food strip, and a T-junction linking Adelaide Road to Verdun Road.
It could have happened … but Murray Bridge’s council recently decided to go in another direction.
Councillors voted this month to sell two properties it had kept for the purpose to a private developer.
An abandoned cottage at 28 Adelaide Road will be demolished, pending development approval, to make way for another fast food outlet.
A medical facility will be built on the vacant block behind it, at 11 Standen Street.
As well as rehabilitating an under-used part of the city, the land sale will net the community $900,000.
Mayor Wayne Thorley said the deal would be good for the community.
“Attracting investment to our area is a key focus of the council’s growth aspirations,” he said.
“The acquisition by GP Securities demonstrates investor confidence in our rural city, and the subsequent development will help meet the growing needs of our residents.”
Council CEO Heather Barclay said the money from the sale would go into a future fund, to be used for land purchases or community facility upgrades down the track.
The council will begin a strategic review of all its properties, figuring out which it might sell and where it might need to buy land for new community infrastructure, later this year.
The proposed Verdun Road extension had been considered, on and off, since 2015.
However, after nine years, Ms Barclay said discussions about the idea had been “unresolved and exhausted”.
In particular, the state Department for Infrastructure and Transport had expressed reservations about creating a new intersection in an area where cars were already coming and going in all directions.
When GP Securities approached the council about buying the two properties, councillors voted to shelve the road plan permanently.
The council spent several months assessing the planned sale in accordance with its unsolicited proposals policy, to ensure ratepayers would get market value.
Cottage’s donation helped Lerwin extension go ahead
Before the council, the last owner of the cottage on Adelaide Road was a Jessie Bormann, who bequeathed it to the Lerwin Nursing Home.
The bequest, valued at $500,000 at the time, contributed a major part of the funds for an extension of the nursing home which was completed in 2020.
The council looked at renting the house out, but judged that too much work would have been needed to bring it back up to a liveable standard.
“It’s better for the greater good that that strip be activated and that there be opportunities for another food outlet,” Ms Barclay said.
