Tarraleah sale: Potential buyer interested in entire Hydro Tasmania village
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A potential buyer for the former Hydro Tasmania town of Tarraleah is interested in taking on the entire village, possibly avoiding the town being broken up and properties sold separately.
The town of Tarraleah in the Central Highlands was built in the 1930s to house workers constructing the state's Hydro-electric system.
After being largely abandoned in the 1990s, it is now a restored tourism attraction.
The 145-hectare site and its 33 buildings has been on the market for $11 million since earlier in the year.
Real estate agent John Blacklow said one potential buyer was interested in purchasing the whole town.
"They are looking at it to continue with its current theme of tourism, probably to add some more accommodation units to it, so very much the same way to how the current owners operate it," he said.
"There's about 70-odd hectares that have been recently rezoned for further tourism purposes so it's a got a huge amount of potential for weddings and functions."
The potential buyer is due back from an overseas trip in about three weeks.
If the sale falls through, Mr Blacklow said it was possible the site would be sold piecemeal, but the preference for all parties was that it was sold as a whole.
"You would really hope it does go into good hands that can develop it further, I mean there's a lot of infrastructure there," he said.
Sale could put Central Highlands on the map
Tourism is one of Tasmania's biggest industries but the areas of most obvious growth are the east coast, north and south.
Melinda Anderson from Destination Southern Tasmania said an expansion of accommodation at Tarraleah would provide more options in the Central Highlands.
"It's certainly an area where we don't have a lot of accommodation offering," she said.
"We have a lot of small, self-contained and boutique accommodation."
Ms Anderson is hopeful the former Hydro town will remain a tourism attraction, and attract more visitors.
She also hopes it is not broken up.
"Our Hydro heritage is a strength of the state and having those opportunities to stay in buildings that were part of that historic evolution of energy, which is so significant here, it would be very sad to see [it broken up]," she said.
Topics: urban-development-and-planning, travel-and-tourism, tourism, human-interest, tarraleah-7140
