The Coffs Harbour Technology Park has undertaken extensive customer and street surveys and this has shown that there is a shortage of high quality commercial land on the eastern sea-board land which is situated in regional centres serviced by a daily jet aircraft service. This fact is backed up by the broad experience of the dynamic Coffs Harbour City Council’s Economic Development Unit CHCC-EDU.

Within the total regional market, the CHTP Board with the assistance of the CHCC-EDU believes the demand will come from:

• Information and Smart technology based industries
• Rapidly growing businesses, which see location at CHEC as good positioning, or for whom the flexible space and serviced offices are appealing.
• Early growth enterprises that believe their commercial development would benefit from a closer relationship with CHEC.
• Businesses that are delivering Commonwealth and State government sponsored short and long term programs that can see the benefit of being located on campus.
• Life-style businesses that have become too commercial to be remain at home, but whose owners wish to avoid the expense of dedicated administrative overheads.
• Creative Learning based businesses
• · Creative Arts technology based businesses

Whilst there is some competition from commercial sites within the CBD, none of these sites have the virtually unrestricted car parking opportunities provided at the CHTP. This gives the CHTP a significant competitive edge particularly noting bushland settings provided by each lot of land.

Commercial accommodation offering a clean controlled environment is extremely hard to find. A simple desktop analysis of available commercial space shows that there is nothing on offer in Coffs Harbour that can match the facilities being proposed for the Technology Park.

Regional development policy seeks to promote clean and green industry. The CHTP Board has adopted the same development objective to guide progression of the technology park project.