Council can continue with its spin all it likes, but the reality is that development in Glen Eira is outstripping practically every other municipality apart from perhaps the CBD!
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has today released its latest building permit approvals for the current financial year – that is from July to the end of October – 4 months worth of data! Glen Eira is streaks ahead of every other municipality and when size, open space, existing density, and the number of single houses being built as opposed to apartments is taken into account, then we are indeed in dire straits. Yet council is proposing to make it even more attractive for developers by opening up huge areas for 12 storey developments and rezoning hundreds upon hundreds of Neighbourhood Residential zoned sites to both GRZ and RGZ.
These stats (ABS DATA UPLOADED HERE) DON’T LIE! Glen Eira is hell bent on becoming the development capital of the south and probably the west!
A fantastic turnout at tonight’s Elsternwick Forum of at least 180 residents. And once again the anger and outrage was palpable. Councillors present were: Delahunty, Silver, Hyams, Esakoff, Athanasopolous plus CEO, McKenzie. They need to take serious note of this community response which has been mirrored by the Bentleigh and Carnegie forums!
As in Bentleigh one resident got up and asked people to put up their hands if they were happy with 12 storeys in Elsternwick. Not one hand went up. She then asked if people would be satisfied with 4 storeys? Most hands went up. This mirrors what happened at Bentleigh.
Yet throughout all of this ‘consultation’ the constant response from Mullen (and therefore presumably council) has been to avoid answering the most basic questions:
- What is the strategic justification and the data that supports 12 storeys as say opposed to 6 or 8 storeys? Simply arguing that Elsternwick has to serve its function as a Major Activity Centre is not an answer!
- Why when Glen Eira is providing double its housing ‘quota’ is council so hell bent on more development?
- Why does Mullen continually resort to false dichotomies by arguing that the issue is about ‘no development’ versus 12 storeys? No one is saying there shouldn’t be development. The angst is all about what council is proposing and its impact on residents. We have yet to learn anything about what council will do with the schedules to the zones, etc. That is being kept secret!
- Why when residents ask for another ‘option’ to be provided instead of the two options that the plans indicate (each option containing 12 storey buildings) does Mullen say that is a ‘councillor decision’ when he has previously stated that the plans are his recommendations. Who is running the show?
- Why does Mullen, when asked about mandatory height limits say that council can opt for 4 storey preferred heights as opposed to the 12 storey height limit but VCAT will exceed this height limit. Surely there is a vast difference between 4 and 12 storeys? Plus, didn’t council in its interim height amendment for Bentleigh insist that they should opt for some preferred heights rather than all mandatory and couldn’t stop patting themselves on the back that the preferred heights would provide ‘certainty’ to all? Now we get the reverse argument – that preferred heights are non enforceable and that VCAT will exceed the limits imposed. Pity this wasn’t stated at the time the amendments for Bentleigh & Carnegie were introduced!
- And yes, whilst amendments must be signed off by the Minister, surely this does not excuse council from listening to its constituents and at least trying to incorporate their views. Other councils can and do!
Until this council provides residents with honest and transparent answers, with data that is fool proof and detailed, we have absolutely no faith in any pronouncement made by this lot. Consultation is a farce. Pretending to listen to residents is a sham and acting upon resident views has yet to occur. As one resident said, council should be fighting tooth and nail for its people and not facilitating the slums of the future!
Finally we highlight this comment from one resident. She stated that she was concerned with council’s intention of extending shopping and night time hours and the deleterious impact this would have on surrounding neighbours. She said that this had been brought to the attention of Cr Silver and that his response was – “if you want peace and quiet go live in the country”!!!!!!!!!
If this is the attitude of our councillors then we are indeed in deep shit!
Activity centres have 5 main purposes as shown in the following screen dump from the State Government’s Practice Notes. Whilst this dates from 2015, not much has changed in the recent Plan Melbourne ‘Refresh’. Activity centres are there to facilitate further development – especially those centres which have train stations in their midst.
Council’s structure planning has embraced this notion completely and taken it to extremes. Land originally termed ‘study areas’ have now morphed into activity centre borders with a doubling and more in size. This is the case for Bentleigh, Elsternwick and Carnegie. We see no reason to believe that this won’t happen to our Neighbourhood Centres given council’s recent actions. It is also clear from the published documentation that 3 current Local Centres are now being expanded into Neighbourhood Centres and some Neighbourhood Centres like Bentleigh East and South Caulfield are also to bear the brunt of major development.
The result is that over 80% of Glen Eira will now become areas designated as ‘activity centres’ if our suspicions prove correct. This is unheard of in any other municipality. Further, there is absolutely no justification for this expansion of development potential given current rates of development. You don’t double or triple the size of an activity centre without some major rezoning in mind. Residents should also bear in mind that council has been far from transparent throughout this entire process. Information has been published in dribs and drabs and most of it bereft of detail. And still no word about our current neighbourhood centres.
The following images are great cause for concern. Please note that in some of these images the areas shaded red represent the entire suburb. The lines drawn represent the current activity centre boundaries and the proposed new borders. Readers will see that for some suburbs they are practically ALL activity centres. Plus that many of these literally run into each other – ie Carnegie and Murrumbeena; Bentleigh and East Bentleigh. Thus we have huge swathes of land that are now ripe for the picking – in fact, 80% if all of this goes through!
CLICK TO ENLARGE
PS: WE FORGOT TO INCLUDE GLEN HUNTLY – DESIGNATED AS A MAJOR ACTIVITY CENTRE NOW INSTEAD OF A ‘NEIGHBOURHOOD CENTRE’
How on earth can a planning department be so far out in its evaluations of what is happening? Is it incompetence or a case of camouflaging reality so that a pro-development agenda can proceed unhindered?
The screen dump below is supposedly from October 2017 and includes data from the 2016 Census. We’ve taken just one example noting that our comments apply to all suburbs and the breakdown into ‘small areas’. (Source: http://forecast.id.com.au/glen-eira/residential-development?WebID=180)
Things to note:
- Several of the projects listed for completion years down the track are already built and operational – ie Bent Street and Station Avenue ones (see photos)
- The projected increase of an average of 28 new dwellings per year is a joke. In NRZ permits granted by council over the past year, we have at least 20 net new dwellings. And please remember this doesn’t take into account the number of net new dwellings erected in the GRZ zonings.
- We assume (as stated) that the consultants relied on data provided to them by officers. Need we say any more?
Here is a list of permits granted for 2 double storeys in the NRZ in McKinnon over the past year.
8 Blackshaw Street MCKINNON
29 Lindsay Street MCKINNON
40 Hall Street MCKINNON
40 Hopkins Street MCKINNON
33 Windsor Avenue MCKINNON
Unit 1 36 Osborne Avenue MCKINNON
43 Whitmuir Road MCKINNON
14 Blackshaw Street MCKINNON
20 McKinnon Road MCKINNON
2 Draper Street MCKINNON
5 Lord Street MCKINNON
35 Rose Street MCKINNON
10 Lewis Street MCKINNON
12 McKinnon Road MCKINNON
7 Brennan Street MCKINNON
24 Osborne Avenue MCKINNON
26 Clee Street MCKINNON
71 Wheatley Road MCKINNON
31 Lysbeth Street MCKINNON
46 Carlton Street MCKINNON
To complete the full picture of what is happening in McKinnon, here is a list of all VCAT decisions relating to multi-unit development over the past year –
203 McKinnon Road – shops and 4 dwellings, three storeys
6-10 Claire Street McKinnon – 3 storey, 33 units,
29-31 Prince Edward Avenue, McKinnon – 3 storey, 21 units,
10-12 Station Avenue, McKinnon – 3 storey, 21 units,
2-4 Penang Street, McKinnon – 3 storey, 22 units,
91 McKinnon Road, McKinnon – 3 storey, 10 units
251-253 Jasper Road, McKinnon – 4 storey, 12 units
64-66 Bent Street, McKinnon – 3 & 4 storey, 31 units,
6 Prince Edward Avenue, McKinnon – 2 storey, 6 units,
35 Graham Avenue, McKinnon – 3 double storeys
2 Lees Street, McKinnon – 3 double storeys
To therefore predict that McKinnon will only have an average increase of 16-27 net new dwellings per year is ludicrous in our view!
Glen Eira Debates 