Member for Bathurst Paul Toole and Federal Member for Calare Andrew Gee have announced that Lithgow City Council has received a grant of $240,000 to support a $480,000 project to construct toilets and implement a comprehensive lighting strategy in Lithgow’s Blast Furnace park.
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The grant support is from the 2017/18 round of the Tourism Demand Driver Infrastructure program, a Commonwealth funded initiative administered by the State Government to support tourism projects that drive demand and increase local tourism expenditure.
The program is national with only 41 projects selected in NSW by the TDDI.
Lithgow City Council will be matching the $240,000 dollar for dollar by pulling the money from its Building Reserve Fund.
Bathurst MP Paul Toole was enthusiastic about the funding going towards the blast furnace as it has all the attributes to grow tourism.
“The blast furnace is an iconic site as it’s the first iron steel works here in Australia...it’s iconic for our nation, it’s iconic for NSW and it’s iconic for the community of Lithgow,” he said.
“We want to enhance it with an amenities block, lighting the paths and the structure itself,” MP Paul Toole said.
With the Federal government giving $240,000 which will be administratored by the State government and Lithgow City Council putting in the other half, MP Andrew Gee pointed out how you get something unique when you pool all your resources.
“I think this project generally is a great example of a community playing to its strengths, embracing its past and coming up with something that is truly unique not only in the Central West but in the whole of Australia, you will not find anything else like this in our nation,” he said.
The main reason this project was chosen for funding was due to its potential benefits to the area for generations to come.
”It’s a lot of money for Lithgow council because we are matching the $240,000 with our own $240,000 and we aren’t a big council, but this item is important to us so we are proud to participate,” Mayor Stephen Lesslie said.
Mayor Lesslie also talked about looking to the future of the park and the hope that in time it would be used in winter for the Lithglow celebrations and Ironfest.
He said he hoped that they would be able to link different projects together, such as the Eskbank Station railway, which passes through the park and goes to the State Mine museum.
“We are going to build on this, and show our historic past, and I know we will get the crowds here and tourism will come,” he said.
