It is almost impossible to get a straight answer from Glen Eira City Council. Tonight’s council meeting illustrates this fully. One answer was provided to a resident in the public participation section of the meeting. Another version of council’s plans came via an Esakoff statement. The third version came with a response to a public question. Having said all this, there was at least an inkling of council’s plans. And it’s pathetic news for the majority of Glen Eira residents in that those living in neighbourhood centres should expect that council will not be doing anything for at least 2 years to halt development after development in its commercial (and mixed use)areas where the proposed heights outstrip the mandatory height limits in its major activity centres – particularly Bentleigh which has a 5 storey height limit.

The first version of council’s plans emerged as a response to a question from a resident in the ‘public participation’ section of tonight’s council meeting. What we now know as ‘confirmed’ is that

  • Neighbourhood centres will NOT HAVE STRUCTURE PLANS
  • Neighbourhood centres will have to be satisfied with mere Quality Design Guidelines. We remind readers that such ‘controls’ are often nothing more than ‘reference’ documents in a planning scheme and that they are NOT mandatory.
  • The larger neighbourhood centres will get the nod first – ie South Caulfield and Bentleigh East.
  • According to version one and version 3 residents will have to hang on and wait until 2021 for this marvelous silver bullet to even commence. Esakoff’s version was in 3 to 4 months!
  • We also learnt that the Caulfield Station planning will probably now also include Glen Huntly!

Here is the question and the response to Version 1:

Here is the Esakoff version of ‘reality’ –

And here is the response to the public question on the same issue:

What a joke! Don’t we already have ‘guidelines’ that were promulgated as the universal panacea for ALL OF GLEN EIRA? Will work on these new ‘guidelines’ start in 2021 or in 2019?

These councilors should hang their heads in shame when they are literally abandoning the vast majority of the municipality. By the time anything is done our neighbourhood centres will become high rise centres far outstripping our major activity centres. Finally, perhaps crying lack of resources could easily be remedied if instead of investing millions in redeveloping  parks that the majority don’t want ‘redeveloped’ (ie Harleston, Aileen Avenue), or spending hundreds of thousands on ‘consultants’ who produce documents lacking detail and substantiation, more money could be available to do what should be done –some decent and honest strategic planning!!!!!