The bastardry, skulduggery, and pattern of capitulation which has dogged the entire Caulfield Village fiasco, is now complete. Council has once again caved in completely to the MRC/Developer judging by the VCAT order resulting from the August ‘mediation’. (full document uploaded here).
We remind readers that in May this year the Development Plan was rubber stamped by the majority of councillors. Attempting to simply save face, Lipshutz and Sounness put forward an amendment which was meant to ‘rectify’ the problems such as ‘fixing’ the vast number of miniscule balconies, and car parking issues. (See: https://gleneira.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/defending-the-indefensible/).
Well, surprise, surprise, surprise – the developer got practically everything he wanted! The two most important conditions (balconies and car parking) were practically tossed out the window and many other conditions eroded away in favour of the developer. All that council appears to have gained is to force the developer to provide more detailed information on soil depths so that the promised ‘garden of Eden’ will have enough soil to actually survive a year or two!
Which leads us to some pretty important questions:
- Why didn’t council insist that this goes to a full hearing and not mediation if they were so adamant that their conditions were vital?
- How much did this mediation cost ratepayers since we would bet that council employed barristers, planning ‘experts’ etc.?
We also must congratulate all those ‘backroom boys’ for their years of plotting, since this development is now exclusively OUT OF THE HANDS OF COUNCILLORS. Everything is now up to the ‘satisfaction’ of the ‘responsible authority’ – ie officers (exclusively). Hyams, Lipshutz, Pilling, Esakoff have done their work and handed the MRC their biggest prize ever to the detriment of every single resident living in Glen Eira.
Below is a summary that we’ve drawn up. On the left hand side is what the resolution of May 2014 stipulated. On the right hand side is what has now changed according to the VCAT order. These are all verbatim. Please read carefully and then ask yourselves whether or not you believe that Glen Eira is indeed the ‘cave in Kings’ of the State!!!
There’s undoubtedly a lot more buried in the technical detail of this order, so we welcome your views on what we’ve left out.
Glen Eira Debates 
October 5, 2014 at 10:57 PM
Unbelievable. The bastards will use the racecourse for tabaret parking and the lost spaces in station street won’t come close to being met on site. Dead right authors. This isn’t mediation. It’s a sell out.
October 6, 2014 at 10:05 AM
One of the smallest words in the English language -“or”. It means millions here for the Mrc.
October 6, 2014 at 2:30 PM
Nothing was going to be any different on this. Each step over the past five years has been leading to this and they’ve known it all along. The deal I reckon was that the mrc would get whatever it wanted and the demands kept growing. Stupid old council went along with everything and then some of these dopes realised they didn’t have a leg to stand on. My way of seeing all this is some of them knew where they were heading right from the beginning and to make things a lot easier they set up the gang of four then the subdivisions all over the place and flogging off more land to them. It went on and on and for good measure a couple of more amendments tossed in so that any balconies could hang over what was supposed to be setbacks. This sure is a great way to plan and look after residents. They are a joke of a council and should be sacked for deceiving the public and incompetence.
October 6, 2014 at 2:57 PM
http://www.afr.com/p/lifestyle/sport/club_sets_course_to_attract_more_FudDBe33bMLBnIYjU15XvL
This one sentence says a lot for the value of the much vaunted ‘agreement’. Not worth a cracker!
“Plans include more events at Caulfield, including movies on a new giant video screen early next year.”
October 7, 2014 at 8:27 AM
So much for the Auditor General’s Report – less than a month after the scathing report was issued and the MRC is ignoring it.
Oh and good job Council for approving the giant screen – see what happens when you give up the farm then try to “negotiate”.
October 6, 2014 at 7:22 PM
Neither the labor nor the liberal government will touch MRC. AG report will remain a report be it Neph or Andr if either becomes Premier. The three trustees picked up by the government are their own.
October 6, 2014 at 8:02 PM
You are probably right in thinking that neither side of politics is likely to engage with the MRC and certainly not to clip their wings significantly. Even so, that does not excuse council’s cow towing to this pretend “non profit” organisation. Having given away so much already it would have been some small recompense if residents knew that at least one promise that was made to them was kept. The way it stands now every single promise starting from the agreement to the development has turned out to be hollow and useless. This history of broken promises is the history of Glen Eira council.
October 6, 2014 at 10:10 PM
Our barbecue is about 1.5 metres long and around half a metre wide. Putting this onto some of these balconies means that there wouldn’t even be space for a table or chair to sit outside. Very good job council.
October 7, 2014 at 8:43 AM
have to admire them. Sell all your own land and use crown land for virtually free. Can someone confirm that there have been changes to the training track. I think they have removed all the steeple chase jumps
October 7, 2014 at 9:10 AM
The flats are designed to appeal to overseas investors. Similar to the inner city units that flood the current market. Barbeques on the balcony are not required.
October 7, 2014 at 7:35 PM
It’s all pretty good since the MRC was able to buy the land from profits obtained for the cheap use of “:our land” . The rent is currently less than
$90,000 for our property valued at over 2Billion!