Cooroy’s Revival 

Town plan a result of community consultation

Business boosted by faster internet

How do you rebuild a town that has suffered the closure of its main industries and bring it into the 21st Century as an attractive place to live and work?

Ask the community, the people themselves who have raised families and lived through good and bad times.

About seven years of community consultation produced a plan for Cooroy and its catchment areas to attract skilled workers, commerce and new industries to the area.

On the site of the old mill, known as the Lower Mill Site, a community board drew up a master plan for the lower mill area and Mill Place Precinct after the state government handed control of the land to Noosa Council.

The rejuvenation of Cooroy comprises three projects: Development of the lower mill site including refurbishment and restoration of the old boiler and kiln; Mill Place, including the library; and the Clever Networks project.

The road to recovery was started by the Cooroy Task Force, which morphed into the Lower Mill Board at the end of 2004.

The money for the Mill Place, including the $9.7 million for the library, was made available through the state government’s Q150 Legacy Infrastructure Program, Noosa Council’s existing funding and the sale of land at Pearsons Road.

The western side of the Lower Mill site was turned over to commercial uses, and part of the strategy to attract large employers was provision of high-speed broadband internet.

The Clever Networks strategy was devised to deliver that need. For now, the project is delayed pending Monday’s vote at a special meeting of council.

Business boosted by faster internet

The Data Centre establishes Cooroy’s position in the knowledge economy.

This major piece of infrastructure aims to give an alternative to the Coast’s traditional boom and bust industries of construction and tourism and offer a “new” economy. The project includes two elements, which will be delivered by network carrier partner Allegro Networks and Information Communications Technology (ICT) partner Mach Technology. Allegro networks will oversee the rollout of fibre optic and WiMAX networks which will be connected to existing fibre optic trunks to Brisbane via the rail line and Mach Technology will construct and operate the Data Centre.

Mr Pettigrew, of Mach Technology, said the Data Centre would house new business applications and services for the entire Sunshine Coast region.

The centre will be fitted out with and house high-performance servers and core network devices that allow connectivity of up to 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) – thousand of times faster than typical (eg ADSL) broadband connection speeds – the type of technology capability that is usually available only to large businesses with significant budgets will be affordable to all.

Cooroy’s Revival…article here