In collaboration with Port Stephens Council, SGS produced a strategic land use study to refocus Council’s planning priorities to meet changed population and future demand pressures.
We investigated commercial and employment land supply across Port Stephens to develop the strategy. Identifying current and future supply, the study recognises emerging trends and recommends opportunities to address shortfalls across the network of centres to facilitate sustainable future growth, diversification, and suitable floor space allocation to meet the projected population's needs in 2040.
Our approach included the following:
- Current context: Our analysis started with an in-depth exploration of the existing landscape, including strategy and policy review, identifying key trends and drivers, and stakeholder consultation with business chambers to understand growth aspirations and operational challenges.
- Supply and demand side analysis: We used a detailed modelling approach to understand the space available and to account for known future floorspace in the pipeline derived from a net demand gap based on population and employment projections.
- Strategy development: We developed a future vision strategy driven by both bottom-up and top-down perspectives, considering local needs and broader strategic positioning.
By identifying floorspace supply and forecasted demand across retail, commercial, and industrial floorspace, we proposed an updated centre hierarchy to account for new growth areas, with future actions for each region and specific centres.
Our work will support the Council in guiding development potential, improving investment attraction across centres, and ensuring communities have suitable local access to goods and services to encourage sustainable future growth.
