181 Taranganba Road, Taroomball QLD 4703

I live on Taranganba Road and work in the major shopping centre located not far up the road from this development. I do not want this at all. This will create traffic chaos, noise, pollution, crime in an already traffic heavy area. Tanby Road and Taranganba Road cannot handle this traffic at all! Especially in peak hour traffic when the cars are banked back for kilometres. I also do NOT want to lose my job in Yeppoon Central Centre when people stop going there and my employer cannot afford to keep me on. My son works in the Stackies complex and I do NOT want him to lose his job for the same reason. There is zero need for 3 shopping centres in Yeppoon. Economically this will kill jobs, not create them and send local businesses to the grave. Local businesses are already hiring workers from overseas as they cannot get staff. Not to mention my house price will plummet if this is allowed to go ahead. Whomever has this idea does not live in Yeppoon and has no idea what it is like to live here. Locals have not even been considered in this.

I am writing to put forward my thoughts against the proposed development of a new Woolworths Metro by Lancini on Tanby Road/Taranganba Road Yeppoon.

I have lived in Yeppoon for 16 years and believe Yeppoon is nowhere near ready for this to go ahead. I am a local business owner, and my children all go to school here. We support many of the local sporting clubs and charities on the coast.

If this center were to go ahead it would destroy the town as we know it and cause business suicide to most current business owners. Those businesses owners are locals, Mums and Dads. They are people who support the community. As a business owner, I can tell you now that businesses in Yeppoon Central Centre, Keppel Bay Centre, Stackies and town center are all struggling as it is. There are some days that both major centers are ghost towns. Some say they are struggling to pay their rent. There are already too many vacant shops in town, why add to the town's demise by opening another centre and dragging people away from the town that needs them?

Lancini will tell you their foot traffic in their Yeppoon Central Centre is enough to open another store: their foot traffic counters are not an indication of spending by the foot count. Also, foot counters have been proven to be inaccurate up to 30%. If both major centers in town already have empty stores and some businesses are struggling to pay rent, why would you allow a Woolworths Metro to open 2.8km from the current Yeppoon Central Centre and drag what Lancini claims will be 10000 people away from town?

We have asked customers their thoughts and they have agreed they would simply not have a need to come to town as much nor at all for groceries. This is utterly horrific.

I urge you as real locals to please not allow this to go ahead. We as business owners are already facing unprecedented stressors as it is, why would you allow a large city company to come in and ruin us?

Going back to my opening statement: local business owners support the Yeppoon community. If you allow this center to open, the butterfly effect that the town will see will be disastrous and impacts will be felt across the community. There won’t be any more supporting sporting clubs and charities; the money just won't be there anymore. It will be in Woolworths and Lancini’s pockets, both major companies who are based in major cities.

Please, from all business owners in Yeppoon, do not allow this. The town just isn’t ready yet and won’t be for some time to come.

This development is unwarranted and completely unnecessary. All this will do is spread an all ready limited customer base and put other businesses in jepody. The population does not warrant such a complex when there are already two major shopping centres in the area.

It would be better to spend money on increasing road capacity first. Once road capacity has increased, then the town is ready to accept more shopping areas. Doing it the other way around, i.e. building the shopping centre first, thereby creating more lengthy traffic jams is not a sustainable way of going about things.

Woolworths and Coles are not selling at full capacity. Their hours reflect a small town usage: weekdays 8 am - 9 pm and weekends 9 am to 6 pm.

The intersection of Taranganba road turning onto Tanby Rd needs to be improved by adding a turn left lane only so that the traffic turning right doesn't create such a backlog of cars.

Adding a new shopping centre there would also severely affect the small shops in town and could contribute to some of them going bankrupt. We don't need more places for people to spend money. If anything we need to spend money on education and on creating safe roads, ensuring that speed limits on the Rocky/Yeppoon Rd are enforced to prevent the recurring accidents. We should spend more money on creating more dirt paths in nature (not concrete) like the beautiful path at Kemp Hill. We need to provide more beauty, not take the beauty away.