Green light for Black Hill Industrial Estate
July 29, 2021
Work on the first stage of a Black Hill industrial estate earmarked to create thousands of jobs will begin in 2022, the developers have announced. Newcastle Council approved Black Hill Industrial’s plans for an initial three-lot subdivision and subsequent one into 62-lot subdivision earlier this week.
Black Hill Industrial is a joint venture company of Central Coast firm the Stevens Group and Hilton Grugeon’s Hunter Land.
The huge subdivision, on what was previously Coal and Allied-owned land, won concept approval from the NSW Planning and Assessment Commission in 2013.
The now approved first stage of the project takes up about 30 per cent of the total developable land. The direct employment places once fully operational was also put at 3600. Equating for the size of stage one, its capital investment value is about $230 million in 2013 dollars and the subdivision should produce about 1300 employment opportunities.
Business Hunter CEO Bob Hawes said the the Black Hill-Beresfield area was “ideally located for this form of investment and development” given its proximity to transport links and the workforce base of “nearby residential centres across Maitland, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle and Cessnock”.
There is also a “spine of fibre that follows the M1” that can “accommodate data needs” of businesses as “activity moves online”, he said, adding the estates would enable a “continuation and diversification in the sorts of businesses that will be interested” in establishing a preference in the area.
“The face of light industry has changed and will continue to change in the region. The influence of growing sectors like Defence manufacturing, Medtech and energy will underwrite a continued demand for employment lands,” he said.
“The diversification ambitions of the Port of Newcastle and the Airport will reverberate across the local economy and that is going to support not only existing businesses but also shine a light for other business interested in coming to the region.” Read the full article on Newcastle Herald here, published on 24th July 2021 by Max McKinney.