After five decades in a temporary building, Helensburgh Library can look forward to a new permanent home.

The long-awaited new Helensburgh Community Centre and Library will be built across two blocks of land at 53-55 Walker Street, next door to the current library, Wollongong City Council announced on Friday.

Council’s Community Services Director, Kerry Hunt, said it would be a great addition to Walker Street.

“You can expect more books and more space,” she said.

“There'll be flexible spaces for either community meetings, programs, activities, as well as traditional library activities like story time and stuff like that, which is really cool. But it will be double the space of the library itself.

“Libraries and community facilities are not just buildings, they are places of community gathering, they are opportunities for people to engage with each other, and having it in a location like this, where it's connected to the heart of Helensburgh in the main street, is really exciting.”

Community consultation on council’s plans is expected to start in October and construction will begin in autumn 2027.

Council listened to location feedback

In Helensburgh to share the news on Friday morning, Wollongong’s Lord Mayor, Gordon Bradbery AM, said “extensive consultation” drove the decision and the site “ticks the boxes” as it’s centrally located on the main street and close to the shops.

It has been three years since Wollongong City Council bought the 1858 square metre double block, which is zoned B2, for $3.6 million in September 2021.

The new centre’s design will have to take into account bushfire constraints, which the Lord Mayor said had delayed the decision on a location.

“We acquired this site and then there was constraints imposed upon it after we had acquired it. So therefore we went and looked at alternatives,” he said.

Council spent time considering a site on Crown Land near Helensburgh Pool, but ruled it out due to people preferring a more central spot.

In terms of design, the Lord Mayor said it would likely be single storey, include space for parking and versatile rooms.

“Most communities want meeting spaces, activity spaces, but they don't want necessarily huge halls and that sort of thing,” he said.

“So it's very much a model very similar to the Corrimal and Thirroul community centres and libraries. It all fits now in terms of the most preferred and practical location and the type of facility that we want.

“We've got to do the initial design work now.

“We are looking at a project that could cost up to $20 million, heading north, especially in the light of the cost of building these days, with not only the labour, but the materials. So we are looking at possibly even going to a more manufactured module type of construction. So there's all sorts of possibilities as to get getting this off the ground pretty fast.”

Council plans to sell the current library site to help finance the cost of building a new centre. It’s also hoping the state government will contribute to the project.

Right spot, slow process

“This is a win for the community,” Neighbourhood Forum 1 convenor Warwick Erwin said of the decision to build the centre on Walker Street, rather than near the pool.

However, with construction still three years away, Warwick admitted he was frustrated by the slow process.

In 2021, he said that NF1 – an independent community group supported by Council – received an email saying a new centre would be operational by 2025.

“It should be already in design,” Warwick said. “It should have been in design a year and a half ago. It should be construction starting this year. That’s what it should have been. But it's been delayed and delayed and delayed.”

Community feedback has shown that residents want the centre to span three blocks, including the current library site, Warwick said.

“It has to be over the three blocks. And it needs to have car parking facilities. And the exit of the car park should be straight into the new roundabout.

“Now the question is, ‘What size community centre do we need?’ Not for now, but for the next 50 years.”

Helensburgh is growing as duplexes, townhouses and villas replace single homes and the new library will serve the wider 2508 postcode, Warwick said.

“It needs to cater for a town of about 10,000 people.

“We need somewhere that can be used as an evacuation centre and a recovery centre, because we are on our own in bushfire. And it's been proved in all the big bushfires that have gone through here.”

In the 2001 Christmas Bushfires, all roads out of Helensburgh were closed, except Lawrence Hargrave Drive, which was clogged with traffic.

Warwick criticised Friday’s announcement as “purely political” as the media call did not include an invitation to forum members and took place less than a week before the current council is due to go into caretaker mode ahead of September 14’s local government elections.

Temporary reprieve for old centre

As well as revealing the site for Helensburgh’s new community centre and library, council also announced it will be fixing up the front ‘Youth Centre’ section of the old centre, so it can be used for meetings from January 2025.

The old centre – across the road at 26 Walker St – has had damp and mould problems for 15 years. It has been partly closed for eight years and entirely closed since December 2021.

Since then, the suburb of 6500+ people has had no community centre for public meetings and just one public toilet, near the Post Office in Charles Harper Park. (There is also a toilet inside the library for its visitors.)

Ultimately, the mouldy building will be knocked down but the land’s fate after its demolition is unclear.

“The land on which the Community Centre is built has mixed ownership including Wollongong City Council and Crown Lands,” a council spokesperson said. “The Crown Land portion of the land is also subject to an Aboriginal land claim and this will assist in determining the future use of this land with relevant stakeholders.’’

Councillors welcome decision

The Lord Mayor, Deputy Lord Mayor, two councillors and two council staff members attended Friday’s announcement outside Helensburgh Library.

“I'm just so happy we're at this point,” said Deputy Lord Mayor Tania Brown, who has been a councillor for seven years and is Labor’s mayoral candidate in the upcoming elections.   

“It's been a long process for the community and this is a major project so we want to make sure we got it right and I'm excited for the next term of council to see this delivered for the community of Helensburgh.”

Ward 1 Liberal councillor Cameron Walters said he was glad that council had taken on the community’s feedback about their preferred site. “We're now going to move forward and I think residents of Helensburgh and the greater 2508 area just want to see it built.”

The next step will be soil testing on the site to see if remediation will be required. 

NF1 will meet this Wednesday, 14 August at Otford Community Hall at 7pm. At the time of writing, the forum was waiting to receive information about the new community centre.

Key dates:

• October 2024 – Community consultation on new Helensburgh Community Centre and Library
• January 2025 – Old community centre’s front section to reopen temporarily as a meeting space.
• Autumn 2027 – New centre construction to start
• 2028 – Completion date to be announced

Keep an eye on Our Wollongong for project news