The challenges facing BlueScope's grand plan to unlock industrial land

The former warehouses, loading bays, offices and green space that make up much of the 200 hectares set to be revitalised have been off limits to the public.

"It's a site that's been deliberately not available to the public for many, many years, because it was an industrial production facility," Wollongong MP and Planning Minister Paul Scully said.

Last Friday, Mr Scully announced the formation of a cross-government working group as BlueScope and the government begin to tackle the mammoth task ahead and there's no time to waste, with BlueScope targeting the project to be well underway by its 100 year centenary in 2028.

The project is shaping up to be one of the most transformative initiatives the city has ever seen, on par with the establishment of the steelworks and port itself, and with competing visions about what the end result could look like, there is pressure on the leaders to not squander the opportunity.

In a press release accompanying the announcement, the project is compared to reactivating the Sydney CBD from Circular Quay to Central Station. Just to the west of the CBD, the harbour city underwent its own land transformation, as the former rail yards and docks at Darling Harbour and Pyrmont Bay went from being the heart of what was once a working port into an entertainment and retail precinct, capped off with the glass towers of Barangaroo.

That is precisely what outgoing Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery does not want to see in Port Kembla.

Instead, he says the focus should be on 21st-century manufacturing, building on the area's industrial heritage.

"It's been used for decades for heavy industry and we need to focus on making it part of our sovereign capacity to produce and sustain our steel industry and associated industries in Australia."

Around Australia, there are examples of old industrial sites being reactivated, some well, some not so well.

The transformation of Docklands from pre-container port into apartment towers and corporate headquarters has its critics, while the re-use of Australia's old car manufacturing assembly lines have had varying levels of success.

The former Mitsubishi site in Tonsley, south of Adelaide, has been integrated with the neighbouring Flinders University and serviced by an extension of the rail line, while at the other end of the city in Elizabeth, the much larger former Holden factory has had its stops and starts.

But perhaps the most similar to Port Kembla is the former BHP steelworks in Newcastle.

Thankfully Port Kembla won't have to contend with the loss of thousands of jobs during the process, but more than two decades since the last workers walked off the Newcastle steel plant, the re-use of the site remains contentious, partly due to disagreements between the state government and the Port of Newcastle about a container port there.

It is these kinds of disputes that Mr Scully's working group, which he will chair, is designed to prevent.

In addition to state government representatives, Wollongong City Council and BlueScope will be represented, to ensure that the benefits of the project are maximised, Mr Scully said.

"About one per cent of gross state product comes out of this facility, we have the potential through the masterplan to double that, to create the opportunity for 30,000 people to be employed in that area," he said.

"This is the sort of life-changing, region-changing, state-changing opportunity that we have before us."

At the heart of the project is a tension between the lofty goals and the realities of modern manufacturing.

In June, during the masterplan process, BlueScope executives revealed they were targeting having up to 30,000 people working on site.

The number has a certain resonance to it, being roughly equivalent to how many people worked at the steelworks during the heydays of the 1970s.

But modern manufacturing is a very different beast to the labour-intensive practices of the past. Despite this, the 30,000 number has been picked up by politicians, including Mr Scully, when talking about the vision for the 200 hectare site.

For comparison, the Wollongong CBD employs about 25,000 people, across about 100 hectares.

Fitting in a similar number of people, while retaining 60 per cent of the land as open space, and ensuring the site remains amenable to heavy industry will be a challenge.

One of the earliest tenants in the old warehouses set to be transformed is Green Gravity, which is designing a gravity battery to operate in former mine shafts.

CEO Mark Swinnerton said the company was attracted to the large, open format space, close to the steelworks, port and road and rail links.

"We need to have the ability to manufacture fairly sizable equipment and components, we need to have the floor space to assemble steel frames and components and prepare them to be distributed to mine sites."

While the company's "gravity lab" is located inside the old no. 1 works site, the company's office is on the Innovation Campus, at Fairy Meadow.

Mr Swinnerton said future plans for the Port Kembla lands should maximise the site's natural advantages, rather than seeking to locate as many workers as possible on the site.

"To me it would be squandering the natural benefit of that site, to not try and maximise the heavy industry dimension, because once you lose it, you lose it and not many places have it."

Cr Bradbery concurred.

"It is too valuable to lose to interests that are not focused upon the future of Australia's ability to manufacture."

Whichever path the project goes down - jobs bonanza or heavy industry powerhouse - there will be challenges for both.

Already, Wollongong has a shortage of housing, and links to new housing areas in south-west Sydney are constrained by an at-capacity road network, and limited public transport options.

The assembly of wind tower components in Port Kembla had to be ruled out due to low bridges over the M1, and wind towers and other large industrial components are only expected to get bigger.

At the same time, the ageing rail infrastructure that connects the city's heavy industry to the rest of the country is increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events.

"We won't be able to accommodate all the workers required for that if it's the numbers that they're quoting, and plus take into consideration all the constraints that are now on a city that is very vulnerable to inundation, flooding, bushfires and so on."

Replacing the bridges, or improving transport connections to Sydney would require significant state and federal investment. But Port Kembla could be the region's unexpected trump card, Cr Bradbery said.

"The future of this city is greatly enhanced by the maximum benefits we can get out of that port, because it also gives us political and economic leverage for the success of this city."

With the NSW government now considering the fallout from the Port of Newcastle pushing for a container terminal to be built there before Port Kembla, the city would be wise to leverage the one-off nature of the project, Mr Swinnerton said.

"Certainly the rail and road linkages definitely need reviewing if you are going to maximise the value of that site."

As the push resumes for the government to reconsider the Maldon-Dombarton link, the future prospect of moving 30,000 people and associated goods and materials into and out of the port will require serious consideration.