The Kiama We Could Build

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what kind of town we want Kiama to be in ten years.

The one where our kids can afford to live near us. Where the first responders we count on, the ambos, the police, the SES volunteers, can actually afford to live in the town they’re serving. Where the cafe owner in town can keep her staff because they have somewhere to sleep within twenty minutes of work. Where we still have a working leisure centre, a functioning council, and a community that hasn’t been quietly hollowed out by holiday lets and weekenders.

That town is possible. But it isn’t going to build itself, and it isn’t going to come from cutting another service or raising another fee.

It’s going to come from being smart about what we already own.

Most of us don’t think about it much, but Kiama Council owns some genuinely valuable land. Three pieces in particular keep coming up in my head when I try to imagine what’s possible.

There’s Havilah Place, where the old nursing home was demolished. It sits empty now, right next to our 42 year old leisure centre, in a part of town that already functions as a community hub.

There’s the leisure centre itself, which everyone agrees needs replacing. Council’s own advisory committee has already said as much, and has recommended building something bigger and better in its place: not just a pool and a gym, but a proper community facility with services, retail, maybe even council offices.

And there’s the Council Chambers on Manning Street. Two minutes from the ocean. In the middle of town. Possibly the single most valuable piece of land Council owns. But we can’t sell it while we still work from it.

Look at those three things side by side and a question almost asks itself. What if they aren’t three separate problems but three parts of one solution?

Imagine this. We build a new civic and community precinct on the Havilah Place and leisure centre site. Modern, well designed, locally appropriate. A new leisure centre at the heart of it. Council offices on an upper floor. A cafe at street level. Underground parking that makes the whole quarry function properly for the first time. Apartments above, a meaningful share of them set aside as affordable housing for the workers Kiama needs but currently can’t house.

Then, once Council has somewhere to operate from, we bring the Manning Street site to market at its full potential and use that capital to help fund the precinct that made it possible.

A precinct like that doesn’t need to be ugly or out of scale. It doesn’t need to look like every other coastal redevelopment from the last twenty years. Done well, it could be the thing visitors actually come to see. Done badly, it could be a disaster. The difference is in who designs it, who delivers it, and who Council partners with.

The best argument for getting the affordable housing piece right is sitting half an hour up the road in Wollongong. The Housing Trust opened a development on Crown Street in 2024 called Northsea. Fifty four homes in one building: some social housing, some affordable rentals, some private apartments. The principle behind it, the thing that makes it work, is that no door looks any different from any other.

You cannot tell, walking past, who lives where or how. A door is a door. A neighbour is a neighbour.

That’s what good mixed tenure housing looks like when it’s done by people who know what they’re doing. Several Kiama councillors have already been through Northsea. The reports back, by all accounts, were positive.

If we got a precinct like that built here, in partnership with an experienced Community Housing Provider, two things happen at once. We start meaningfully addressing our housing crisis, and we unlock state and federal funding streams that are not available to a normal council asset sale. The money is there. It just follows the right delivery model.

Kiama Council is still under a Performance Improvement Order. The deadline for a balanced budget has been extended to 2027/28, but the underlying problem hasn’t gone away. Costs keep rising. The fee debates over the holiday parks this past month show how politically painful the alternative looks: trying to plug a structural revenue gap by squeezing residents and ratepayers a little harder every year.

There is a better way out of this. Council already knows it, in fact. The Finance and Major Projects Committee is already looking at the catalyst sites. The question is how ambitious we’re willing to be about what we do with them.

If we sell the land raw, we get a one off cash injection, and a developer captures most of the long term value. If we instead establish planning certainty for these sites first, whether through rezoning or a site specific plan or a concept approval, then partner properly, that value flows back to Kiama ratepayers. The principle is well established in public asset divestment around the country. The closer Council gets a site to a deliverable approval, the more of its value Council captures rather than handing it to the next buyer.

This what smart councils do with land like this.

The honest version of this is that Kiama has a narrow window. State and federal policy is currently more supportive of mixed tenure housing delivery than it has been in twenty years. We hold the land. We have a council under genuine financial pressure that needs sustainable revenue. We have a working model just up the road. We have councillors who have seen it and understood it.

Windows like this don’t stay open forever. In five years the funding programs will have shifted, the political climate will have moved on, and the catalyst sites will either have been sold off in pieces for short term cash, or we will have done something genuinely transformative with them.

I know which version of Kiama I want to live in.

The draft Council budget is on public exhibition until 24 May. If you have a view on how Council uses its strategic assets, this is the moment to say so. Submissions can be made through Council’s website. Even a short submission helps, because what councillors hear from the community shapes what they feel able to consider. Here is a step by step guide

You can also speak to your councillors directly. They are accessible, and most of them genuinely want to hear from residents who are thinking constructively about the future of the town.

Kiama has been given a difficult hand to play. But we are not without options. We own real things, in real places, at exactly the moment when doing something visionary with them is most possible.

Let’s not waste it.

Author: Lynne Strong

I am a community advocate, storyteller and lifelong collaborator with a deep commitment to strengthening local democracy and amplifying regional voices. With roots in farming and decades of experience leading national initiatives like Action4Agriculture, I’ve dedicated my life to empowering the next generation and creating platforms where people feel seen, heard and valued. I believe in courage, kindness and the power of communities working together to shape their own future. These days, you’ll find me diving deep into the role of local media and civic engagement to explore how regional communities around the world are reclaiming their voice. View all posts by Lynne Strong