When it comes to the proposal to build the Northern Regional Prison outside Westbury, opinions in the local community are polarised.
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John Temple is a photographer who owns his own gallery on Meander Valley Road. He's also a Meander Valley councillor.
Cr Temple, did not offer a personal view on the prison site proposal, but said he had been approached by "around about" six people per day since rumours began to circulate several weeks ago that the prison would be built at the Westbury Industrial Precinct.
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"Because I'm the most readily approachable councillor with a wide door open to the street, a lot of people put their scripts in at the pharmacy and then come to tell me what they think is happening at the moment, which is always interesting and fascinating," he said.
"I've only actually had one [person] that's come in to [the gallery] tell me they support it. The rest have been quite hostile [to the idea], actually.
"The rest are very concerned about stigma in the town; they're concerned about ... older people that are single living in homes by themselves - if there was an escapee in the area, they'd be terrified."
Cr Temple said the community had "a whole host of concerns", including concerns around the impact a nearby prison could have on property values and quality of life.
"There are a number of people that have come here as tourists and have found the town a delightful place and have bought a house to retire to," he said. "I've had perhaps a dozen [people] in that time that have said [to me], 'If we'd known this was going to potentially happen, we would not have come here'."
"And most of them have gone on to say, 'If it happens, we need to leave'.
"I've heard, as recently as a few minutes ago, one person saying that their house is for sale, and hoping the prospective owners don't hear about this before they sign on the dotted line."
Another Westbury resident, Robert Hill, told The Examiner there may be "pluses and minuses" to the proposal.
"There'll be people visiting so I'm sure they'll be dropping in the local cafe and all that as they go to and fro," Mr Hill said. "So there might be some businesses that benefit from this."
"[The prison is] not exactly going to be a blot on the landscape is it?
"It's going to adjoin other sizable buildings - I would imagine that's quite a logical place for it [and] for me that's not a particularly great issue."
Real Estate Institute of Tasmania president Tony Collidge said he didn't believe the construction of a prison near Westbury would put downward pressure on house prices in the area.
He said Risdon Prison in the South "hasn't really had an impact on house prices at Risdon Vale, which is right next door, or Geilston Bay".
"Perhaps if they are rural properties in a regional area ... that's really the only area that would be impacted by [a Northern prison] at all," Mr Collidge said.