PETER Higgins is clearly disappointed when he talks about packing up and moving out of the Hawkesbury. He sounds frustrated with the Hawkesbury Council.
The Mortgage Choice co-founder and owner of Sydney Polo Club at Richmond is selling his beloved polo property (he hopes for $75 million) along with the former Richmond Post Office building he and his wife Rebecca "fell in love with" back in 2009 (he's asking for up to $4 million), and moving on.
"Anywhere but this council," he told the Gazette, referring to the local government area of Hawkesbury City Council.
"In the end I found the challenges that we had with the lack of enthusiasm from the local council - on so many fronts - was making it difficult for us to invest in the area, however we still own quite a few apartments in Richmond."
First there was the issue with holding weddings at Sydney Polo Club, which Hawkesbury Council put a stopper on in 2016.
Then there was the development application to open an upmarket bar and cafe at the historic Richmond post office building, which would sell beer made at a microbrewery at Mr Higgins' Richmond Lowlands property, however neither application was fully supported.
Mr Higgins said the council invited him to lodge a rezoning application to allow polo to be played regularly at the fields and also to promote tourism by running functions at his property, but council discontinued the application.
In 2017, Hawkesbury Council took so long to approve Sydney Polo Club's application to host the XI FIP World Polo Championship, that the State Government intervened, giving Mr Higgins the green light at the last minute.
The way Mr Higgins sees it, Hawkesbury Council was simply "unwilling" to help him - even to the detriment of the Hawkesbury community.
"The council has promised so many things to us - including the rezoning, that would enable us to run functions and weddings in the area, but quite simply, they lied," Mr Higgins said.
"We've wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of our time to wait for this council to do the right thing - to do what the residents are looking for, to do what they say they're going to do."
He said there were "some very interested parties" looking to acquire his polo club, which is selling through Christie's International.
The historic Richmond Post Office on Windsor Street was recently listed with commercial agent JLL Australia, taking the sale country-wide following failure to secure a local buyer.
"There are many opportunities," said Mr Higgins of the post office, for which he had architectural plans already drawn up and ready to go.
Had Hawkesbury Council approved of his vision, he had imagined his new upmarket bar, cafe and restaurant would be "a nice place" for locals to frequent, serving the local business community, as well as early morning tradies and families.
He still hopes someone from the Hawkesbury will snap up the heritage building: "I thought someone local would be ideal, someone in the community, rather than someone in the city."
"It could become a medical centre, a residence, a commercial office space. It would be nice to see the stables at the back serving coffees and looking after mums and dads and kids in the park next door," Mr Higgins said.
"There's a very real demand to do something magnificent with that building. It takes someone with a vision and an ability. But we've had enough."
What's next for Mr Higgins?
"When you've got choices as to where you can spend your time and money, you really want to go where you're welcome. We're already investing in property around the Northern Beaches and the Inner West of Sydney," he said.
"Every time we wanted to do something [Hawkesbury Council] always found reasons to say 'no'. We've got a choice: we can invest in any area we want to, and we have other councils that are inviting us to invest in projects with them.
"After a while, when I realised the council talked the talk and didn't walk the walk when it came to tourism, it got too hard and wasn't worth our effort."
He said he would be sorry to say goodbye to the Hawkesbury community; he had been one of the locals for 30 years: "We love the people in the area. We've got a lot of close friends in the district, and we wish it well."