The greater Estella area, which is growing at a faster rate than Sydney, has swelled from a few homes on the other side of the river to three massive suburbs and constant demand for more development.

City strategy manager Tristan Kell said an area north of Boorooma, behind Charles Sturt University, was being considered.

“Council is investigating the next area for rezoning, we’re looking at environmental and feasibility constraints at the moment,” Mr Kell said. “The key thing is ensuring there’s the infrastructure to support new residences without having a detriment on the existing suburbs. Council’s also working with existing developers on improving east-west connections.”

One of the drawbacks of the area’s rapid growth was that older thoroughfares like Farrer Road and Pine Gully Road were being used by thousands of vehicles every day, leading to a need for urgent repairs. 

The construction industry welcomed any move to make more land available for homes in the area, but builder Anthony Corbett said getting infrastructure right was critical.

“It’s a good idea, we need more land to keep the cost of lots down, but certainly we’d welcome help with traffic flow even during construction, let alone after,” he said. “I think we need more work on arterial roads around those suburbs, not just between them, but the Gobbagombalin Bridge bottleneck needs to be one of the first things done, it’s a limiting factor.”

Services in the area are also tipped to improve with a new public school on the table and two shopping centre developments in the works. 

“I think those things will help drive the area forward and take them to the next level,” Mr Corbett said. “If we could get one, if not two off those shopping centres off the ground it would be great, I’m no demographic expert but it seems that area’s a long way behind and it should have had shops a long time ago.”

Mr Kell said integrating existing infrastructure and services to complement any new developments was important to council.

“The city needs to continue to grow but we want to improve what’s there first,” he said.