Magazine - $500m Big Hill Resort Scrapped

By Editor in Golf on 26th Aug 2010 13:00

Former Carlton footballer Greg Williams’ dreams of building a golf resort at Big Hill are over.

The $500 million project became unviable when residential plans within the resort were rejected by both the City of Greater Bendigo and the state government. Initial plans for the Big Hill Investments project, backed by Mr Williams, were to include 450 homes, a conference centre, other resort-style developments as well as a golf course.

City officials confirmed last week plans had been “unofficially” withdrawn. Mr Williams said that in the end it became “too hard”. “It’s pretty much over. With the amount of work and money that went into it we decided that it just got too hard.” He said in the end it came down to the rejection of residential plans.

“The council and the government wouldn’t allow residential [property] outside the planning zone. “But in the residential strategic plan it says there’s room for a resort-style development and that’s what we had, a resort-style development.

“But you need to have the residential behind it to build the resort. You can’t build the resort without the residential.” “If it was just a resort, well, you could live with that, but they wanted to put a suburb of Bendigo out here.

Source & More: www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au

Read more articles in Golf, by Editor or from August 2010.