Bunbury Visitor Centre location to be reviewed after Bicentennial Square opportunities are explored

The future location of the Bunbury Visitor Centre is still up in the air, as the City of Bunbury “kicked” the issue down the road at Tuesday’s council meeting.

The city came under fire last month, when a draft tourism plan document suggested the visitor centre be moved to the Koombana Bay Tourism Precinct.

The shift, which was unpopular with some residents who believed the CBD was a more appropriate location, saw the city backtrack from that idea at the council meeting on May 20 with an updated tourism plan which was approved unanimously.

The new document suggests the visitor centre should be located “in an accessible location that enhances the visitor experience”.

This location is “to be reviewed once further development and opportunities at Bicentennial Square have occurred and been reported on”.

Bunbury mayor Jaysen Miguel said the tourism plan was an overarching document which covered key themes, such as destination marketing, events and visitor servicing, all of which needed to be assessed and reported on.

He said the city still needed to “work through” possible locations for the visitor centre.

“At some stage — and we’ll obviously need some budget allocation for some of the particular things as well — we’ll be reporting back on what are we doing in this space,” Mr Miguel said.

He said the work being done at Bicentennial Square would “fit back into that process”, and there were also other proposals which had been put to the council for the visitor centre, including the old train station.

“We are expecting the Bicentennial Square master plan to come back in the next month that may potentially have some ideas around visitor servicing and the visitor centre . . . we’ll need to bring that into house and see how that goes as well,” he said.

Until its future is decided, the visitor centre will remain at the Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre.