Akuna Street and Caliope Street might have looked like just two more lines on last week’s meeting agenda, but Kiama Council’s decision for them both to proceed marks a quiet turning point for our community and its future.

A Council long branded as anti‑development is now, cautiously, putting its stamp on growth.

For years, Akuna Street has been shorthand for everything locals feared about overdevelopment, height, bulk and developers trying to remake the town centre for scale the community were not prepared for and did not support.

The 14‑storey proposal at the carpark site has become a veritable lightning rod, prompting legal manoeuvres, community outrage and a council that is still seemingly in the dark as to what is happening.

Now, with that project declared State Significant and much of the final say shifted to Macquarie Street, Council’s recommendation to progress proposal for a smaller site to the south of the controversial carpark site is less a surrender than a strategic recalibration.

By engaging with the process instead of stonewalling it, Councillors are signalling they would rather shape the inevitable than stage another symbolic, losing fight.

This is despite a 13% variation to the height limit and a 25% increase to floor space for the apartment building.

Caliope Street tells a different, but complementary story: a green light for new homes in a town that has spent years agonising over a housing strategy it desperately needs but struggles to embrace.

The planning work already done for Kiama’s urban release and key catalyst sites and the recognition that Council must help meet state housing targets hangs over this decision.

Endorsing Caliope to move forward is an admission that saying “no” to density in the centre and “no” to greenfield supply on the edges is no longer an option if locals want their kids to have somewhere to live.

The contrast with past terms is stark. Previous Councils often defined success by what they could stop: towers cut down to size, rezonings stalled, strategies sent back for another round of “community reassurance”.

This Council, by recommending Akuna and Caliope progress in the same week, is edging toward a different test: how to secure design quality, infrastructure and housing supply from developments that are coming anyway.

That won’t silence critics who still see every crane as a crack in Kiama’s character.

And if our social media pages are anything to go by, there are a number of locals that are up in arms regarding last Tuesday’s decision and are expecting the four storeys at Akuna Street to become 14.

However, this cynicism distracts from the step change happening within Council and through parts of the community who see more housing as a positive move.

Kiama is moving from a defensive politics of protection to a more mature politics of negotiation still protective but finally prepared to let some projects through the gate in return for a better, fairer town that is preparing for a future.