Dubbo Regional Council approves development application and allows Bunnings to expand their current site

With 60 new staff over the past two years, Bunnings has been looking for an expansion of their current site and Dubbo Regional Council granted their wish at the ordinary council meeting on November, 24.

The expansion of the building will include a main warehouse, outdoor nursery, bagged goods canopy, time trade sales area, building materials landscape yard, bulk trade yard, new internally relocated café and playground, one additional trolley bay and 33 standard and one accessible carpark spaces.

Bunnings property development manager, Tim Wilkinson, thanked council for progressing the development application with efficiency.

"If approved it will create one of the top 10 Bunnings in terms of size, and certainly bigger then any of the regional Bunnings in this vicinity," he said.

"We've been very lucky as a business over these last two years to create a number of jobs and employ a number of additional people in our stores and Dubbo's been no exception to that."

Mr Wilkinson said the expanded store will give them more opportunities to recruit even more people from the local community.

That's in addition to the construction jobs that will take place during the building phase, which is expected to take around a year to complete.

"Furthermore, there's a safety impact that's worth mentioning; being able to have the trucks ingress and egress through the proposed design along the rear boundary of the site and ensuring there is no trucks mixing with consumer cars will be really beneficial," he said.

"In addition to a second goods area where the smaller trucks that are both dropping off and picking up bulk loads can do the same through the rear boundary, we think that's a real beneficial point."

With an estimated value of $11.5 million the extension will mean council has to relocate the sewer line and access easements.

Councillor Matthew Wright said it was a testament to Dubbo that a large business is confident about the outlook of the city.

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"They are willing to spend substantial money here to expand and grow," he said.

"It's fantastic, and well done to the proponents for having confidence in the city."

Cr Richard Ivey said it was a "win-win" situation for the business to add to their existing infrastructure with further infrastructure that will compliment what it already has.

"It's so much better than moving to another site and therefore having to do something with the old site," he said.

"Being able to expand what's there and end up with something that's much, much better then what's there now is win win, it's great."

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