Busselton council to pause works on Dunsborough Lakes Sports Pavilion after 80-minute debate on Wednesday

Dunsborough sporting clubs are divided on the development of a multi-use indoor pavilion with the project now paused for more consultation. Representatives from soccer, football, basketball and cricket attended Wednesday night’s City of Busselton council meeting where debate raged over the status of the Dunsborough Lakes Sports Pavilion for more than an hour. The council voted 8-1 to pause the project and organise a consultation workshop despite it now being more than a year on from the initial decision to push forward with plans for a multi-user sports pavilion. The original motion, put forward by Cr Andrew Macnish wanted to halt the plan altogether for a report on various issues including extending the grassed playing surface for a soccer pitch, a “modest” clubhouse facility and a lease for the exclusive use of a mid-pitch pavilion. The Dunsborough Town Football Club opposed the development, citing a lack of amenities, accessibility and future plans for the growth of soccer. Player and committee member James Tindall said he was disappointed with a lack of “meaningful input” from the clubs and called it a “fundamental failure in planning”. “The current proposal to place a shared pavilion near the basketball courts doesn’t work for soccer or many other codes. The pavilion is completely disconnected from the pitches,” he said. “There’s no nearby amenities, no storage, no shelter, no canteen, and no plan to secure the extra space soccer urgently needs to keep up with its explosive growth, particularly in junior and female players.” Club president Natasha Blefari said the soccer club “fully supported” an extension of the grassed playing surface to host another soccer pitch. “We acknowledge the efforts that have taken place to establish the northern pavilion design today, and we acknowledge the needs of the other user groups,” she said. “We certainly don’t want to take anything away from that, but to acknowledge that our needs are not aligning.” Dunsborough Basketball Club president Jon Ricciardone supported going through with the current project development. “Until new courts are built in Dunsborough, the club will always advocate and champion almost any development that delivers Dunsborough with new indoor courts,” he said. Dunsborough Football Club president Mark Delane said the needs of all clubs should be included in the precinct. “Whilst we don’t support the motion, we support some of the points in that motion to investigate soccer’s needs, and we’ve always collectively stated that there should be space for them in the precinct,” he said. “Equally, we can’t deny the fact of the need for indoor courts for basketball. We’re against the motion as it stands, but we can support an alternative that saw the pavilion continue with the provision there were some genuine consideration to soccer’s needs.” Cr Macnish’s motion to the council lost in a 3-4 vote, before Cr Kate Cox presented an alternate motion. That was to request the chief executive schedule a workshop to review strategic priorities and for club presidents to be invited. It would be an independently-facilitated workshop, which garnered approval eight votes to one, with Cr Jarrod Kennedy voting against. The item paused any further work on the proposed Dunsborough Lakes Sports Pavilion and the future district sporting precinct until strategic priorities were reviewed after the workshop. The city has been working towards a new sporting precinct at Dunsborough Lakes for the last five years, which will house the town’s netball, basketball, cricket and soccer clubs. When the project location was chosen and design works started last year, there were complaints staff had not addressed issues raised by the town’s soccer club. Ms Blefari said last year said the club had not asked for new facilities and the proposal to “relocate to a facility which offers inferior amenities that will place our club at a disadvantage” raised “legitimate concerns” for members. Ms Blefari described the actions of council staff in the consultation process as sowing “seeds of discord” and “pitting various sporting codes against one another”.