Drainage works to kick off Koroit renewal

Koroit’s long awaited township renewal will begin in the coming weeks, with essential drainage works kicking off stage two of the project.

At Tuesday’s Council Meeting, Councillors reallocated $300,000 from the annual drainage renewal budget to works which will address flooding issues in Commercial Road.

Mayor Cr Ian Smith said with township renewal works beginning soon, it made sense to do the drainage first and work would begin in the coming weeks.

“It’s ready to go now. The plans have been done and there’s about to be plenty of activity in Commercial Road,” he said.

“Once the drainage work is complete, we will begin preliminary footpath works on the section of funded works from IGA to Woolsthorpe Road on the northern side of Commercial Road. This will include repairing the existing kerb, new kerb channel and driveway crossovers, before getting into building the new bluestone path in the new year.

Cr Smith said this stage of works was being funded with the $1 million Council had previously allocated to the project.

“We’ve got a funding application in for $2 million in matched funding from the Federal Government’s Growing Region’s fund to complete works to the other footpaths in Commercial Road and for works in Hight Street.” he said.

“If we are successful in that application, we will have a further $4m in total to complete bluestone footpaths on both sides of Commercial Road from High Street to the Commercial Hotel and for footpath, road and parking works in High Street as far as Victoria Park

“The detailed plans for all that work are now complete, so once we have the funding secured, we can get underway.”

“We asked businesses and the Koroit and District Progress association if they would prefer us to wait for the outcome of the funding application or to get started and spend the money we already had allocated. Their preference was to get started, so that’s what we are doing.”

Cr Smith said Council’s project management office would work closely with businesses who will have work in front of their stores and the community would receive regular updates via Council’s social media and website.