Plans for the expansion of the Copper City Motel have stalled for the past six months however motel owner Scott Smith is hoping work will commence within the next week.
Mr Smith said the delay was pretty much his own fault as he’d underestimated the scale of work involved in a project of this kind.
The new $750,000 hotel and conference centre is to be an adjunct to the 30 room Copper City Motel.
The project received a $375,000 grant last March (to be matched by $375,000 by Mr Smith’s company Out of the Ordinary Outback) under the Commonwealth Government’s Tourism Demand-Driver Infrastructure program, which is administered by the State Government to boost product quality for visitors.
While the Development Application for the project was approved with conditions by Cobar Shire Council last August, progress on site has been at a standstill.
“It’s mostly been our fault as it’s been hard finding specialists to come to Cobar to do the construction certificate.
“We ended up getting them from Adelaide,” Mr Smith told The Cobar Weekly.
He said allowances needed to be made for wheelchair access; a traffic study had to be carried out; and other components needed to
be sorted before he was able to submit his construction certificate to council.
“It involved a lot more than I realised, but we hope to start work in a week or about 10 days,” he said.
Mr Smith said it’s important the work is done by June 30 which was a one of the conditions on receiving his Commonwealth Government grant funding.
“Now we just need to find lots of trades- people.
“The good news is we are inching closer, it’s just taken us longer than expected.”
