Announcing Plan Melbourne, Mr Guy promised 50 per cent of suburbs would be protected from development. Glen Eira got much more. Nearly 80 per cent of the city, which includes Bentleigh, McKinnon, Ormond, Elsternwick and Carnegie, would be protected from apartment and unit-style development, Ms Crozier declared, setting an ”enormously positive example for other councils to follow.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/not-all-going-to-plan-in-tale-of-two-cities-20140628-3b0pj.html#ixzz3kxUMrkZ0 (June 29th, 2014)

So much for the spin, the propaganda, and the misinformation. We certainly take issue with the 80% of Glen Eira as ‘protected’. But even more offensive is the claim that ‘Bentleigh, McKinnon, Ormond, Elsternwick and Carnegie’ would not suffer from ‘apartment and unit-style development’. The reality is that huge swathes of these suburbs are now geared towards facilitating 3, 4 and even higher storey developments – and it’s all thanks to the new residential zones and council’s woeful record in strategic planning.

Ormond, in particular, is testimony to the falsity of the above claims. The suburb is barely 2 square km in its entirety. Exclude those areas designated as ‘parkland’ or public utilily zones, then the area available for development shrinks to about 1.83 square km. Then there’s another 25 or so hectares zoned Heritage, but this hasn’t stopped council from giving the green light to development by zoning large parts of such areas as GRZ1. In addition, large sections of these areas are also under a Special Building Overlay because of flooding concerns. What all this means is that in Ormond, just under 42% of the suburb is zoned as appropriate for 3 storey dwellings. Another 8% of land is zoned either C1Z or MUZ with no height limits at all. That makes Ormond the most potentially overdeveloped suburb in Glen Eira with over 50% of its land designated for 3 storeys or higher.

Readers also need to remember that Ormond is NOT an Urban Village. It is a Neighbourhood Centre, where there is supposed to be less development. How that is possible with such zoning beggars belief. But this is planning in Glen Eira – inept, pro-development, and with no thought as to the long term impact on people’s lives. When over 50% of a suburb (which is not a major activity centre) is geared towards high density development, then there’s something drastically wrong with planners, and the councillors who allowed this to happen.

Here are the figures upon which the above calculations have been derived –

C1Z – 54,329 sqm

GRZ1 – 745,837 (THE LARGEST GRZ1 AREA IN GLEN EIRA)

GRZ2 – 21,182

MUZ – 10,113

RDZ – 97,740