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A week of key decisions
16 December 2006
This week has been a particularly good week for the University. Not only were we academic winners in the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund in Queensland behind University of Queensland, but the announcement of $4m to upgrade Sippy Downs Drive will at last free up the traffic gridlock around the area.
I was delighted to see that our staff were rewarded for their consistent, maximum, 5-star performance as independently rated. The new monies will now be ploughed back into advancing further our range of regionally-related programs and associated initiatives.
I was equally delighted to see that Maroochy Shire Council (MSC) won national recognition for their University town plan for Sippy Downs. The model has gradually evolved across more than ten years. It is a clear blueprint for the creation of a distinctive urban footprint where the emphases are on a distinctive boutique environment and with links to the ‘knowledge’, ‘technology’ and ‘integrated community’ themes that have consistently pervaded the discussions since 1994.
With this week’s announcement that Sippy Downs Drive is to be four-laned and connected directly to the motorway interchange, we at last have achieved the initiative that has the potential to transform Sippy Downs in the decade ahead.
MSC also seems intent on developing approval processes that will protect the integrity of the Town Plan, and hopefully avoid the huge supermarket and broad-acre car parking proposals that could compromise the boutique, knowledge and technology emphases. MSC is also now looking at how these emphases can be translated into a reality.
For its part, the University is engaging one of the world’s most experienced manager of science parks and national innovation systems to advise and inform further planning.
I hope that Sippy Downs can still emerge as a regional jewel for high tech job generation into the twenty-first century and as a sub-regional centre directly complementing rather than competing with other urban centres on the Coast.
Professor Paul Thomas is Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Sunshine Coast.