Wagga City Council hopes to start construction on a freight hub at Bomen next year after a $29 million grant this week completed a search for state funding.
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Council general manager Peter Thompson said the approval of all grant applications would make it easier to find a contractor to begin works.
"We have been working on going to the market to get a contractor to build everything, a single contractor to build the rail hub and the intermodal terminal and the subdivision next door," he said.
"We have been drafting that on the basis that we could drop the subdivision if we didn't get the funding, but we have now got the funding so it will be one project packaged up for one contractor to be the principal.
"I would expect us to be building on the site by the middle of next year."
Mr Thompson said he hoped to issue a tender before the end of the year, if not late next month, for work on creating an industrial subdivision at the freight hub site.
Wagga City Council has proposed the Riverina Intermodal Freight and Logistics Hub, or RiFL, as a terminal for the transfer of containers between road and rail while encouraging nearby industrial development.
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The council's previous budget had sought $35 million in state government grants for the project.
Visy Logistics signed up as a commercial partner in August last year to fund a freight terminal at the hub.
On Thursday, NSW Premier John Barilaro announced that the state government would invest more than $29 million at Bomen to "make Wagga even more attractive to local and international businesses".
Mr Thompson said the council was "getting so much industry interest in buying sites out there either for starting new businesses or expanding existing ones".
He said the state government would continue work on a separate but nearby project, with the special activation precinct to fast-track planning approvals.
Committee 4 Wagga chief executive Alan Johnston said a lot of plans at Bomen "were now becoming real".
"External investors will be taking a much greater interest, particularly once construction starts," he said.
"It gives Wagga something to sell that's real."