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The St Ives Showground and Precincts (SISGP or Showground) sits in a 192ha site located to both sides of Mona Vale Road St Ives.

The precincts include:

St Ives Showground (SISG or Show-ground)

Ku-ring-gai Council Community Nursery (KCCN)

Ku-ring-gai Wildflower Garden (KWG)

Former Green Waste Tip (GWT) site

St Ives Road Safety Centre leased to Honda Australia Roadcraft Training (HART) and licensed to NSW Police for the Community and Road Education Scheme (CARES).

The SISGP land adjoins the Garigal Na-tional Park (GNP) to the south and Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (KCNP) to the north, in addition to several unallo-cated Crown Land and Council reserves directly.

Council’s Precinct website

In 2010, Ku-ring-gai Council (Council) adopted preferred options for the site in the St Ives Show-ground and Precinct Options Paper, the objective of this paper being to identify opportunities to re-use existing sites and facilities within the precincts for further recreational purposes.

As Council is the Reserve Trust Manager for a number of different reserve trusts within the site, it appointed external consultants ,Environmental Partnership (NSW) ,to prepare a Plan of Manage-ment (PoM) for the overall Precinct in accordance with the preferred options to ensure equitable outcomes. In addition, the PoM addresses the requirements of the Crown Lands Division (CLD) as land owner, consolidates all the reserve trusts into one as directed by the CLD, revises the purpos-es for which areas are gazetted and addresses the unallocated areas of Crown land in the PoM precincts.

St Ives Precinct Ku-ring-gai Council

EOI - General Informa�on

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The need for a

Plan of Management

The St Ives Showground and Precincts (SISGP) site is a much valued regional recreation facility for Ku-ring-gai and the wider northern Sydney re-gion. It offers both passive and active recreation with a range of activities including walking, pic-nics, equestrian events, cycling, dog training club and off-leash areas, model plane flying club, radio controlled car club car and motor cycle safety training/eventing/racing, as well as, sports training and competitions, markets, playgrounds, environ-mental education, Community Shed and the annu-al Agricultural and Horticultural Show, all within a bushland setting.

In response to objectives identified in Council’s 2008-2012 and 2009-2013 Management Plans to seek opportunities to re-use sites in the precincts for recreation, Council prepared a Draft Op-tions Paper and Public Expression of Interest process to investigate major elements of the site that could potentially benefit from public/private partnerships or partnerships with other levels of government. The report and Options Paper adopted by Council in June 2010 along with subse-quent community and stakeholder consultation provided the basis for the dPoM.

Council and the CLD identified the desirability of a consolidated management approach to the site that coordinates an effective and integrated planning direction supporting management structure. This recognised and allowed specific responses to the individual issues and needs of the varied park precincts.

The benefits of this approach include:

• Reserve land can be assessed and man-aged in a holistic way in consultation with the community, rather than in isolation.

• The use and management of the St Ives Showground and Precinct can support public

requirements and increase capacity to allocate resources where they are needed most.

• The land can be managed responsibly for the environmental, social, cultural and economic needs of the community.

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User Groups

St Ives Showground

The area is used extensively by community groups including the following permanent lessees:

Northern Suburbs Agricultural and Horticultural Soci-ety which conducts an Annual St Ives Show in May each year, the St Ives Summer Horse Show in Janu-ary and the St Ives Winter Horse Show in August. http://www.stivesshow.net

Northside Riding Club which holds equestrian events on both the Princess Anne Arena and Ash Arena throughout the year. http://www.northsideridingclub.org.au

Northern Suburbs Dog Training Club which holds week-end and evening dog training.http://www.nsdogtraining.org.au/

Ku-ring-gai Model Flying Club which holds events throughout the year on the Model Flying Club field. http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/clasnsw/kmac.htm

St Ives Radio Controlled Electric Car Club which regular-ly uses its own purpose-built track.http://www.zipworld.com.au/~dazb/stivesrc.html

Ku-ring-gai Community Shed which conducts daily work-shops in woodwork, light engineering and craft. http://kushed.org.au/

Ku-ring-gai Miniwheels Training Club which conducts weekend training and competitions in motorcycle riding for young people using its own purpose-built track, This activity will cease at its current location on St Ives Show-ground next year http://www.miniwheels.com.au/

Australian Recrea-tional Centre for Aer-ial Arts (ARCAA) which conducts aeri-al trapeze classes every week-end.http://flyingtrapeze.net.au/

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Major Events at St Ives Precinct Council managed

Last year St Ives Precinct Management in-troduced a series of major outdoor events which have included St Ives Medieval Faire,

http://stivesmedievalfaire.com.au/

The Big Swing

http://www.bigswing.com.au/

Back to the 50s

http://backtothe50s.com.au/

Major Events 2016

External

The Curry Festival http://curryfestival.com.au

Weber’s Circus http://www.weberscircus.com/

Australian Soccer Tournament

http://www.australiansoccertournament.com/

The Raw Challenge

https://www.rawchallenge.com.au/

Born2Run, http://www.born2run.com/

Miss Muddy Fun Runhttp://www.missmuddy.com.au/

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Ku-ring-gai Wildflower Garden The Ku-ring-gai Wildflower Garden is one of Sydney's best kept secrets, but we don’t want it to stay that way! Situated in St Ives, the 123 hectares of urban bushland is a great spot for bush walking, picnicking and special events. Within the Wildflower Garden visitors can choose from a range of public access walking tracks, including the ac-cessible Senses Track or the more challenging Mueller Track. The Garden features heath land, tall forest, sand-stone outcrops, ponds, gullies and waterfalls. There are several picnic areas with barbecues, some of which are available for hire. There is plenty of onsite parking, toilet facilities and a chil-dren's playground. The Garden is open 8am – 5pm daily and The Visitor Centre is open daily from 10am – 4pm. Manned by expe-rienced rangers, it offers patrons assistance with walks and nature enquiries and its Gift Shop stocks a large range of plants, cards, books and merchandise for sale. With its beautiful private garden and bushland setting, the tastefully renovated Caley’s Pavilion is the ultimate destination experience for small-scale and intimate events such as weddings and birthday parties.. Patrons are able to choose from a variety of intimate locations in the Wildflower Garden for their ceremony and photos With a modern commercial kitchen available for self-catering, plus state of the art facilities such as an overhead pro-jector and music system, Caley’s can cater for up to 100 seated guests or 140 for a cocktail function. The Wildflower Garden conducts a year-round program of events for nature-loving children. The Junior Rangers Club is a fantastic after-school weekly activity for primary kids who love nature! They can join our experienced rangers for active, hands-on sessions where they learn all about the Wildflower Garden’s plants and animals

and pick up all sorts of essential skills for being a ranger. http://www.kmc.nsw.gov.au/Services_facilities/Facilities_and_venues/St_Ives_Precinct/Ku-ring-gai_Wildflower_Garden/Junior_Rangers_Club Toddlers and Tadpoles is our fortnightly nature playtime activity for children aged 0-5 and their carers. http://www.kmc.nsw.gov.au/Services_facilities/Facilities_and_venues/St_Ives_Precinct/Ku-ring-gai_Wildflower_Garden/Toddlers_and_Tadpoles Each holiday period our school holiday programs are packed with active, hands-on outdoor fun for kids of all sizes. http://www.kmc.nsw.gov.au/Services_facilities/For/Children/School_holiday_activities/Bush_kids_school_holiday_program Additionally, many tours are held for school groups dur-ing term time. Each year the Wildflower Art and Garden Festival attracts

more than 3000 patrons to its celebration of spring and the new wildflowers. This year a Sculpture Walk with cash prizes was introduced for the first time. http://www.kmc.nsw.gov.au/Services_facilities/Facilities_and_venues/St_Ives_Precinct/Ku-ring-gai_Wildflower_Garden/Wildflower_and_Garden_Festival

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Visitors and Opportunities

Visitation at the St Ives Precinct has increased from 67,220 to 111,700 people between 2013 and 2015.

Ku-ring-gai Wildflower Garden visits have in-creased from 12,500 in 2013 to 20,500 in 2015.

St Ives Showground visits have increased from 54,720 in 2013 to 91,200 in 2015.

Over past two years the Precinct has seen an increase of visitation by over 60%.

At the Wildflower Garden there have been 243 programs in 2015/2016 attended by 6,920 peo-ple.

In its first twelve months of its operation the new Visitor Centre has attracted 5,840 visitors.

There are ample opportunities for improving the visitation at the St Ives Precinct by third-party oper-ators. At the St Ives Showground, the existing Rotary Kiosk could become a permanent or weekend café operation. With its nature environment with great appeal to and usage by families, a High Ropes operation could be a possibility. The Douglas Pickering Pavilion, Louise Lennon Pavilion and

Events Area have been used for markets and spe-cial events. These events could be expanded to regular activities such as dances, concerts or sport-ing activities. The Model Flying Arena has been used for outdoor cinema. A regular cinema experi-ence could be set up on any of the arenas, the events’ area or inside one of the pavilions.

At the Wildflower Garden, with its commercial kitch-en, Caley’s Pavilion could be leased to an operator for weddings and functions but also operate as a casual café during the day. Next year it is planned to do more regular outdoor activities at the picnic area, Lambert’s Clearing. Regular programming of cultural events could suit an astute operation.

New activities underway include new way-finding signage through the Wildflower Garden walking

tracks and new external signage for both the Wildflower Garden and St Ives Showground.

If you would like to be part of the action at St Ives Precinct for 2016 and beyond we would like to hear from you.

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St Ives Precinct Ku-ring-gai Council