Happy New Year Artarmon! This year has begun magnificently with the remarkably efficient work by Northwest Rapid Transit trenching the road for a 33kV power cable. It seems that all our extensive engagement paid with them off and they were able to finish the commercial strip under time and with minimal disruption to the school term.

Our first committee meeting this year saw two new and enthusiastic members inducted; Ian Huntley (Inter Desserts) and Nikhil (Nick) Mehta (Artarmon Dentists). They will be replacing Mat Smallwood (Bakers Delight Artarmon) and Sunny Cheung (Artarmon Newsagency). Thank you both for your great service.

Officers were elected by the committee were Flick Simpson (Art On Skin) as treasurer, Richard Thompson (Artarmon Vision Specialists) as secretary and myself as president.

The committee agreed we should strive to have four community events each year, being three sausage sizzles on the Village Green (on 1st April, 17th June, and 9th December this year) and a revival of the successful night markets in September. We are hoping to involve community groups and especially Artarmon Public School at these events.

AVI members would like us to address the never-ending postponement of the development at 98-102 Hampden Rd. After being approved by the Land & Environment Court the development providing brand new commercial space to the shopping strip was due to be finished in 2016. Amendments to the Development Application were refused at council last year and we are now back to square one. This hold up is crippling Artarmon businesses.

The meeting ended in unanimous agreement that a good project to focus on this year would be establishing a modern public toilet in Hampden Road adjacent to the Easy Access lift at the station. Below is a list of the current Artarmon Village Inc members. Please appreciate and support these Village businesses.

“This is the Artarmon Village section of the Artarmon Gazette. To read the full copy of the Gazette please click here“