Warrnambool council's $16.6m plan to revamp to Brierly into community hub

The combined venue would incorporate sporting facilities, a kinder, satellite library and art space on a 12-hectare site on the corner of Moore Street and Aberline Road.

The project would be completed in four stages with a $1.6 million upgrade of the playing surface slated for 2022-23, according to the Brierly Community Hub and Recreation Reserve funding prospectus.

Those works would include a realignment of the hard-wicket oval to develop two natural turf soccer pitches on either side of a cricket wicket, and installation of 200 lux lighting.

The new facility would create a new home for the Warrnambool Rangers soccer club as well as the Brierly-Christ Church cricket club.

The report says women participation in the sports are being hampered by the lack of female changerooms with some opting to change in their vehicles rather than use the current facilities.

The council is set to chip in $600,000 towards the project with the rest of the funding to come from other sources.

By 2024/25, the council hopes to start stage 2 which includes a $12m investment in the community hub to which the council would chip in $2.6 million.

The community hub includes:

By 2025/26, the council plans to spend $3 million - $1.4 million of that from its own coffers - on amenities for the new hub including drainage upgrades, landscaping, lighting, seating and playground or pump track.

The community hub is something Cr Ben Blain has been outspoken about, calling earlier this year to get the project shovel-ready.

Cr Blain said it was something that needed to be funded "sooner rather than later" because of the growth happening in north Warrnambool.

In 2020, the city council put a community hub for either Brierly or Dennington on its wish list for 2024.

Plans for the Brierly redevelopment were on the agenda of a recent council advocacy trip to Melbourne where councillors and staff met with state government ministers and representatives.

The council purchased the Brierly Reserve in 1999, and despite a master plan being completed three years later, only minor works to improve it have been undertaken in the past 10 years as a short-term solution.

That work, the report says, had elevated amenities "from basic to serviceable".

In 2012, the redevelopment of the Brierly Recreation Reserve was identified as an urgent need, and in the decade since, the area had experienced a 12.3 per cent growth.

And this year, the council said that growth had only accelerated, and that was only expected to rapidly increase with so many new subdivisions in the pipeline.

"As development of the local neighbourhoods, and population growth has exceeded all realistic forecasts, it has created an even more urgent need for facilities and community infrastructure in this location," the report says.

"The Brierly community hub and park will be a lynchpin of the Warrnambool City Council's newest and fastest growing neighbourhood.

"The municipality is without a community hub of any definition, despite the dramatic current and predicted growth...

"The current infrastructure is ageing and the need for fit-for-purpose buildings is urgent."

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