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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-18 Daily Xml
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Walkerville YMCA

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:27): I rise to speak about a beloved community hub in my community, the former Walkerville YMCA site at 39 Smith Street. For the last 2½ years, I have been fighting for this important community space and I am really excited to be able to finally say that we are bringing back a community hub to 39 Smith Street.

This week, we released the first concept image of what a refurbished 39 Smith Street will look like. I think it finally shows to the community that we are absolutely bringing back this important recreation community and sport hub, and I cannot wait to see it reopened. We are going to be upgrading the squash, basketball, gymnastics and community spaces and giving the site a fresh facade. I think anyone in our community would know it is not the prettiest building in the electorate, but it has been beloved for decades all the same.

My campaign for the site began back in September 2020 when the then council was looking not to renew the lease of the INEA YMCA, which launched a massive community campaign to try to save the YMCA. Despite the huge outpouring of support to retain the YMCA at the building, the lease was not renewed and they unfortunately had to move out. There is an image that is really ingrained in my mind from that time. It was around December when the YMCA were moving out of the site and their sign had been ripped off the building and was sticking out of the dumpster. That really was where a picture can tell a thousand words. It was so incredibly devastating to the community that the YMCA was moving out.

For the last two years, the building has sat completely empty. It was really disappointing that the former Liberal government at the time sat back and watched because the outpouring of support for this centre was deafening. Everyone you spoke to in our community had a story to tell, had a special memory about being at the YMCA site, whether it was themselves playing sport there, their kids attending vacation care or a children's party or their grandkids going to the site.

So what I did was I started knocking on doors and I started holding community forums that were booked out. I was proud to make an election commitment that, if the Malinauskas government were successful at the election, then we would commit $5 million to bring back a sport, rec and community hub to the site. That did occur and upon coming into government we delivered that $5 million to the Town of Walkerville, and I was able to start working with them on a process to bring back a sport, rec and community hub to the site.

Now that we have a new council at the Town of Walkerville, I have been working closely with the administration and the new mayor, Melissa Jones. It is very exciting that in the last couple of weeks a council has endorsed a plan to refurbish 39 Smith Street, which will cost around $6.5 million in total, and that includes my $5 million election commitment. We have released a concept image. We are going to very soon open an expression of interest process for community and sporting groups to show their interest in setting up at the site, and we hope to start construction on the refurbishment of the site later this year.

This is a really amazing example of why elections matter, because we were able, as a community, to have our voices heard. We were able to secure this election commitment. We were able to win government and now, as a result of that, we are taking a building that has sat empty for two years for no good reason and bringing it back as a community sport and rec hub for Walkerville, Gilberton and all the surrounding suburbs.

I want to say thank you to every single person in my community who lent their support to this site, to the campaign, and got behind it. I know that, along with all of you, we cannot wait to hear the sound of sport, the sound of kids' laughter and the sound of kids' sneakers on the floorboards at 39 Smith Street once again.

Ms HOOD: Mr Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

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