One of Queensland’s greatest business opportunities is in New South Wales: the Tweed region.

Dramatic growth in infrastructure, combined with astute long-term planning for the region’s vast land resources and niche industries, is positioning the Tweed Gold Coast region as the next great growth opportunity.

Tweed holds all the aces as a region poised to enjoy the best of both worlds in a carefully planned mix of business growth backed with an enviable lifestyle – one of the best places in Australia today to live, work and play.

While the region’s distance from the state capital of Sydney may have contributed to relatively slower development of the Tweed in the past, it has had the positive effect of leaving the region poised for well-planned growth now.

Steering this dramatic swing-point in time is the Tweed Economic Development Corporation (TEDC), which created an award-winning economic modelling system to help plan Tweed’s future.

According to TEDC chief executive officer and director, Tom Senti, the economic models are showing Tweed has a range of challenges to meet – but it also offers unprecedented opportunities for sustainable economic development.

“For example, we know from the modelling that the Tweed region has a work participation rate of 42 percent of the population, compared with 64 percent as the state average for New South Wales (2007/08 ABS) and 62 percent for South East Queensland,” Mr Senti said. “If we are to achieve a 50 percent work participation rate by 2031, on current population growth projections we need to create 25,000 jobs in the region.

“That’s a significant challenge. But it also drives us to concentrate on realising the opportunities we are presented with.

“A key element of Tweed’s future, we believe, is the development of integrated master-planned estates, with business parks, residential and education precincts, where people live close to work and have recreational and lifestyle facilities close to home – and good transport links.”

Diversified Economy

It is this long-term high-quality lifestyle sustainability that underpins the decision-making of the TEDC and the Tweed Shire Council. An early result of this modelling has been new programs to diversify the region’s economic base.

As Mr Senti puts it, Tweed is shaping itself so it can be viably considered as a base for national and multi-national corporations – and it will have compelling research to back it up.

The Tweed and Northern Rivers Economic Modelling Tool has already proven its worth in interpreting and evaluating socio-economic impacts of development projects from a position of long-term sustainability.

A key element of future development of all types in the Tweed, for example, is the planned integration of fibre-optic communications to new master-planned communities, meeting demand for connectivity that will also encourage home business and remote office growth.

“Successful business parks today are developed in specific precincts and there is a shift away from existing business centres,” Mr Senti said.

“The old approach of general use industrial parks, where you used to get conflicting use and often messy environments, simply does not work today. That’s why we have developed plans for modern precinct-style developments that incorporate great lifestyle elements, transport and world-class communications links.”