The “Old School Farm” project

BACKGROUND INFORMATION 

Huon Valley Council (HVC) owns approximately 4ha / 10 acres of vacant land, right in the heart of Cygnet (behind the new Medical Centre in George Street). This was previously the Cygnet Area School Farm (which the Education Department sold to Huon Valley Council for ~$90,000 in 1997) and the former Cygnet Council Depot.

Many older residents remember learning farm skills on this property and one of the first coal fired power stations in Tasmania provided electricity to the township using locally mined coal. 

Currently HVC and ratepayers get no income or significant community benefit from ownership of this valuable land.

  • In 2003 plans were drawn up for a 31-housing lot sub-division but this did not progress.

  • In 2009 new plans were prepared for a combination of 13 housing lots and 18 pairs of conjoined “independent living units”.  Again, for various reasons, nothing happened.

At a community forum held in Cygnet in 2018 the HVC General Manager suggested that, rather than council proposing plans for this area, it might be better if the Cygnet community propose the ideas and suggested that we start with a “blank page”.

The Cygnet Association (Inc) decided that the first step in this process should be to conduct a comprehensive Community Consultation.

How this consultation was conducted, and all the submissions can be found here:

We recognise that we do not represent the entire Cygnet community – no one does – but we are part of it and our stated aim is simply “to help make Cygnet a better place to live, work and visit”.

Following on from and using the information provided during the 2018 consultation process we prepared a Development Proposal in 2021 that we feel would provide for good residential usage while also providing a range of community benefits. This includes a “Concept Plan” that should be recognised as such as no detailed groundwork has been undertaken at this stage. It does, however, give an indication of the style of development that would appear to be consistent with the feedback received.