NSW Crown Holiday Parks Trust chief executive officer (CEO) Steve Edmonds will visit Lake Keepit Holiday Park next week as part of a long-term master plan to upgrade inland water parks in regional NSW.
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Mr Edmonds and his team will be on site on Wednesday to “ground truth” the park to provide a map for future park development over the next 10 years.
“Ground truthing involves testing site opportunities against any site constraints,” Mr Edmonds said.
“We are looking at ultimately developing master plans for parks, which will provide a physical plan on what we intend to do over the next 10 years to redevelop the parks.
“We have been working on the ground work, such as electrical, sewer and water upgrades at Lake Keepit, so the initial infrastructure has been taken care of.
“Now we have to look at how to further develop our parks, to improve our business performance and provide a better park for the community.”
He said the visit was to physically see ideas in play and work out what is best for each park.
“The idea is to come up with general concepts and spend some time looking at those ideas from a physical point of view to see if they will work,” Mr Edmonds said.
“An idea might look good on paper but until you get on the ground and have a look at it you can’t see if things will actually work.
“Once those concepts have been worked out, we plan to have workshops with stakeholders to get their ideas on the table prior to the formal process of the Plan of Management to be approved by the minister.
“The objective here is to not only get input from the experts but key stakeholders so that we get it right.”
Mr Edmonds said the master plan was to expand NSW’s inland water parks to bring in new activities that were not dependent on water levels.
“The key thing for us is how can we diversify the parks to bring in activities,” he said.
“Parks are currently very dependent on water levels which affects the number of visitors to a park.
“We are certainly exploring other opportunities to encourage locals to visit parks more
often.”
Mr Edmonds will also visit Lake Glenbawn and Copeton Waters on the first leg of his visit.