Tuesday night’s council meeting will feature the planning application for a 12 storey building at 1056-60 Dandenong Rd. The report by Ron Torres recommends acceptance of this application for 173 dwellings and commercial space, PLUS a reduction in car parking requirements. The proposed layout includes: 50 one bedroom apartments and the rest 2 bedroom, plus 264 car spaces. Apart from a bit of tinkering here and there, the developer’s application has largely been accepted intact.
In this post we will simply highlight and comment on various extracts from the officer’s report.
- The usual blurb about projected population increases feature prominently in the opening – ie.”Glen Eira, amongst other municipalities, is identified by the State Government to have opportunities for increased dwelling numbers. We of course note the irony that in numerous VCAT hearings council has repeatedly argued that Glen Eira has already exceeded its projected increase! How council can therefore use one argument that its population trends have been met and then turn around and argue that there is still a need for ‘increased dwelling numbers’ is simply unbelievable, hypocritical and totally expedient. Consistency, logic, and a real concern for residents is nowhere to be found.
- Whilst new to this precinct the residential land use is consistent with what planning policy is seeking to achieve. There we have it! This council sees nothing wrong with 12 storeys!
- The land is located within a State Government designated Major Activity Centre with access to services, public transport, existing infrastructure and road networks that can accommodate this level of development. Interesting that there is not one scrap of ‘evidence’ provided in this report to support this claim. But it gets even worse when we find this paragraph – In addition, the intensity and scale of the development is considered to be consistent with the vision for the Carnegie Urban Village. Please note that the Minister’s Planning Zone Reform leaves height limits largely up to council. Is this what residents can expect from Glen Eira Council – the acceptance of at least 12 storeys in all its Activity Centres?
- A total of 50 out of the 173 dwellings are one bedroom dwellings (29% of the total). These one bedroom dwellings are located on the east side of the building and their single bedrooms rely on borrowed light (ie The rooms do not have a normal window)…..It is recommended that a maximum of 35 dwellings (20%)_ should rely on borrowed light. No comment is necessary here – it speaks for itself!
- It is acknowledged that the proposal will result in an intensification of vehicle movements in the area. But that’s okay it seems! Again, no facts, figures, analysis. We point out that the plan is to have left hand turn into Dandenong Road and right and left hand turns into Egan St. This wonderful sentence says it all – An opportunity to exit onto Dandenong Road is considered to be significant advantage for this development site.
PS: Another item features the revamped minutes of the Local Law Committee. Tree registers dominate the minutes which state:
“Classified Tree Register
The draft Local Law, selection criteria for classification and appeal provisions were discussed in detail. It was agreed to proceed with the process for finalising a proposed Local Law for community consultation in accordance with the Statutory requirements.”
We highlight this as another example of inaction by this council and its councillors. It should not take ten years for a council to fulfill a resolution. It should not take two years to “consult” with other councils as per other, committee meeting minutes. The public should not have to endure years of spin for no result. We draw readers’ attention to the following:
Minutes of 26th May 2003
Crs Hyams/Grossbard
That Council send a letter to the Minister asking the Minister to protect the Moreton Bay Fig Tree at 66A Balaclava Road, Caulfield North and that Council Officers examine ways to protect this and other significant trees in the City.
The MOTION was put and CARRIED unanimously.
In these same minutes there was this public question which was taken on notice for a response –““Does Council have a significant tree register? If not then will this be undertaken by the soon to be appointed arborist?”
Yes, things certainly move at a glacial pace in Glen Eira – even when the mover of the 2003 motion has now been on council for eons and the chair of the Local Laws Committee likewise!
Glen Eira Debates 
November 9, 2012 at 3:31 PM
well have a look at Dudley Street how much property is available!. Tumbleweed will be blowing through this development. These apartments are designed to be sold to chinese nationals and they are no longer buying them, Even less likely MRC development will be a success.
November 9, 2012 at 4:12 PM
Students are the target and with Monash’s decrease in foregin students this is all going to blow up in developers faces. Add in the high Australian dollar and no wonder they’re staying away in droves.
November 9, 2012 at 4:17 PM
This is the first real test for councillors. After the Hyams, Lobo and other promises to oppose inappropriate development we will learn more on how genuine they have all been. I’m expecting that the same line of argument that has featured before will be used again. That is, instead of 12 storeys and 173 units Council will argue that 10 stories and 150 units are quite “appropriate” knowing full well that vcat will look at the current planning scheme and say that there are no height limits and that the member really can’t see any difference between 10 and 12 storeys.
November 9, 2012 at 6:39 PM
Torres either doesn’t use Dandenong road and knows bugger all about how busy it is or he doesn’t care. He won’t be living anywhere near this. Ya gotta add in monash’s development, c60 and whoever else wants to build and this area will be hell.
November 9, 2012 at 7:51 PM
Highly likely that it will not be built. They will need to pre-sell most of the units. Like an earlier post says, high dollar and not alot of chinese students coming these days.
November 9, 2012 at 8:04 PM
The issue is not whether it will be built, but how on earth it could even get to this stage? The answer is simple – no height limits; no parking plans; no Phoenix Precinct grand plan and no concern about environmental, social amenity.
November 10, 2012 at 7:42 AM
Anon, the actual build date is immaterial. Planning Permits get extended and extended (it’s a rubber stamp process), can even be sold with planning permit attached (increases the value). It can just sit there for years and years until the next “boom” occurs then up she’ll go and people will be wondering how the hell it happened. As long as a developer is willing to pay the holding costs, it can easily take over a decade.
Traffic is gonna be a real killer, but that’s the visible and will spark controversey. There’s also another couple of killers that don’t spark controversey ’cause they aren’t as visible – utilities. Just take one of them – water: 173 units and commerical space and their required inflow and outflow (X number of showers dishwashers, toilets, washing machines). Gonna be a hell of a lot more than the current Glicks offices/factory uses/disposes. Of course the water and sewerage systems when built took such massive developments into consideration and were built accordingly.
November 11, 2012 at 8:34 AM
You appear to be alluding to water infrastructure. One of the biggest problems facing our sewage authorities is these bloody water saving devices. The low flush toilets create problems as the sewage system relies on most of the content being water. With the low flush dunnies the aerobic and anaerobic principals that purify the waste are out of whack. Also the downhill run to either Werribee or Carrum treatment plants is designed for lots of water. The infrastrucure around the Caulfield Statiion will easily handle all the water and waste that they can use.
November 9, 2012 at 8:14 PM
Pilling, Lipshutz, Hyams and Esakoff will state it’s not big enough, change it to 20 stories, remove parking restrictions and give away some public parkland to assist the development. Well that’s what happened with C60. Only in Glen Eira….
November 9, 2012 at 9:01 PM
Ron Torres has written a fairly typical officer report. He decided early on what he wanted, and the rest of the report was devoted to manipulating councillors into doing as he wanted. A *fair* report would discuss the range of planning policies that apply, including all the ones that the proposal violates. He doesn’t do that. All the talk of employment that particular precinct is supposed to provide has been rejected, to be replaced by yet more 1- and 2-bedroom apartments in fairly obvious violation of the housing diversity policy. He failed to quantify the increase in traffic congestion on and around Koornang Rd. Two parts of the report contradicted themselves about whether Egan St was for ingress or both ingress/egress. No mention of open space. Perhaps most laughably, a tram route is described as being “within close proximity”. It is of course over 1km away. The development is on the extreme fringe of the “Urban Village”. Nobody knows what the boundaries of the Activity Centre are, since they haven’t been defined. They’re obviously not the same as the Urban Village if you’ve read the relevant Practice Notes from DPCD. When I voted to remove Labor in State elections on the rare occasion I was given a chance, it was because I saw how they had systematically corrupted the planning system. Yet we still hear references to M2030, M@5M, *Employment* corridors. Well there’s a Practice Note covering Activity Centres, and Council has never followed it. What a f__king mess.
November 9, 2012 at 9:42 PM
Truly mind boggling that things can be talked about for 10 years and nothing’s ever done. Rome was built in less time. A bunch of useless councillors and officers that won’t do as they’re ordered to by the elected representatives. What a great state of affairs.
November 10, 2012 at 11:37 AM
Maybe I don’t understand things so I’m open to correction. I don’t see the connection between establishing a tree register which has been on the cards for ten years and the local law. I’d think that you would be able to get the register off the ground first and then fiddle around with the local law if necessary. Ten years to do something as simple as compiling a list is crazy.