We are committed to facilitating genuine debate within Glen Eira. Your views on planning, environment, open space, CEO and councillor performance matter.
Somewhere between 90 and 100 residents showed up Wednesday night for the Elsternwick Structure Plan ‘face-to-face’ meeting with the Camden Ward councillors. Crs Szmood and Zyngier were present whilst Cr Parasol was an apology.
The night was extremely valuable in that residents could directly address councillors with their concerns, their views on the draft structure plan, and how they generally perceive officers’ attitudes to residents and their aspirations for the suburb.
We present below a selection of comments that were made throughout the 2 hour meeting. It was very clear that there was much dissatisfaction with the structure plan itself, but also the entire consultation process, and how little heed council pays to resident views.
Some of the following audio is not crystal clear. It was a very large room that often sounded like an echo chamber. So please bear with us and listen to these comments.
PS: It’s also worth mentioning that council stated that the audio of the recent Zoom meeting on Elsternwick would be published. It was also promised that all questions would be answered. It is now over 2 weeks since this event and we still have not been provided with this audio or the responses to the queries. Perhaps officers are simply hoping that residents would forget?!!!!!
Glen Eira residents have been told repeatedly that structure planning and associated Design and Development Overlays (DDOs) CANNOT provide MANDATORY height restrictions for commercial sites unless they are heritage listed or have other extenuating conditions. This of course ignores the fact that other councils have been successful in having their strategic planning approved and gazetted.
The most recent example comes from Bayside City Council for the Highett Neighbourhood Activity Centre. Here is the current zoning applying to this DDO. Note the Commercial zoning and the fact that these sites are NOT under any heritage overlay.
Here is the Bayside gazetted DDO – as recently as September this year!. Please note the 3 and 4 storey MANDATORY height limits.
Why has Bayside managed to implement a MANDATORY 3 and 4 storey maximum height limit on these sites, in comparison to Glen Eira’s 6 storey discretionary height for Caulfield South, Caulfield North and East Bentleigh? Why is our council so compliant and unwilling to achieve what other councils achieve? What is really going on within our planning department?
After 7 years of incompetency, we are still back at square one, where the agenda remains more and more development regardless of what it means for residential amenity and meeting community concerns.
We continue to be appalled at the manner in which this council conducts its business and its total disregard for residents and their views. The latest example comes in the agenda for Tuesday night’s council meeting and involves the Inkerman Road ‘Safe cycling corridor’.
Some preliminary observations:
The item consists of 510 pages out of a 1309 page agenda
The agenda was published around 10am on Friday morning – literally 4 days before the council decision (and this includes a weekend) – hardly enough time to read, digest, analyse, and comment by residents. Some of the associated documents date from August 2022 whilst one is from April 2022. Why couldn’t these have been published earlier so that residents can get their heads around them? When were councillors themselves provided with access to these documents?
From a very brief scan of the associated documents, nothing is definitive and recommendation after recommendation includes the need for further research once the project is given the go ahead – despite the plethora of caveat after caveat stating how difficult it is to provide real data and projections for increased cycling numbers, etc. Nor do we know how much all of these consultant reports cost!
What is the most staggering aspect of this item is the following recommendation:
That Council:
1. Adopts Option 2 (Attachment 3) as the preferred corridor design for the purpose of community consultation, once the following pre-conditions have been met:
a) Funding to deliver the project is confirmed through Council’s future budget allocation process.
b) The City of Port Phillip resolves to proceed to wider community engagement on its section of Inkerman Road / Street.
2. No further design work and/or community consultation is to commence until pre-condition a) and b) have been met.
3. Informs community and stakeholders of Council’s resolution.
COMMENT
Why on earth would you commit council to an estimated expenditure of $14M+ before you undertake further (and hopefully genuine) community consultation on the actual options provided?
If voted in, then what impact on other projects does the $14M have? What would be abandoned or delayed – especially if no state or federal funding was received?
WHAT WE ARE TOLD
Option 2 is preferred even though it means that only 47% of current car parking will be retained. How many car parking spots will thus be lost?
Currently the estimated average daily cycle numbers for the Glen Eira sections equals 163 cyclists. The claim is that the increase in cyclists would fall ‘somewhere’ between 84% – 207%. Hell of a range forecast upon which to spend $14+M!!!!!!! and we’re even told that estimating cycling demand is exceptionally difficult
In terms of cycling instead of using the car the result is likely to be only about 6-8%!
Even if the number of cyclists along this stretch of road increased to 800 per day, that is still an expenditure of $17,500 per cyclist!!!! Nor is there any guarantee that this is money well spent in terms of overall safety – ie
The Independent Safety Review found that for both design Option 1 and 2, due to the bi-directional bicycle lane, there are expected risks for cyclists given the high number of intersecting driveway crossovers on the south side of Inkerman Road, largely applicable to westbound cyclists as departing vehicles may not expect a cyclist to arrive from this direction.
To address this the design includes the provision of bicycle line markings and surface treatments at the crossovers which serves to advise the presence of bicycle lanes. With the report concluding, “nonetheless, the prevailing issue is the unexpected arrival of a bicycle in the eastbound direction. As a primarily residential area, it is anticipated long-term residents will quickly adapt to the proposed design, and the risk associated with this item will reduce over time”.
On a wing and a prayer the above quote, rather than any assurance that in the early stages cyclists and motorists will be ‘safer’!!!!!
CONCLUSION
Glen Eira City Council is clearly addicted to grandiose projects that cost the earth and will look good on certain CVs. Whether or not the projects represent real value for money, or even achieve the desired outcomes is seemingly immaterial. All that matters is that agendas are rammed through and virtue signalling becomes the modus operandi for all council decisions.
Finally, we very much doubt that this important item is listed at the end of the obscenely long agenda by accident. What that means is that there will probably be very little time for ‘robust’ debate/discussion!!!!!
Council has stated that its intention is to create a new zone – NRZ2. The stated criteria for earmarking these areas are supposed to be sites along major roads/transport and that they are at a minimum 600 square metres in size. We have previously highlighted that there are countless streets that are not within coo-ee of such measurements. Here is another example – Sycamore Street in Caulfield.
Please note that there is only ONE SITE in the following image that is over 400 square metres. All of the rest are 300+ square metres – half of the size ‘recommended’ in the housing strategy. This leads to some basic questions:
What on earth is this planning department doing? Have they actually bothered to investigate the sizes of the various streets earmarked for increased intensity? Or have they merely sat at a computer and drawn lines around various streets and properties?
How can they produce criteria and then simply ignore them?
Is this simply incompetence, or a total indifference to the basic rules of planning?
PS: here’s some more – Beech Street, Caulfield South.
All of the sites in this image are barely over 300 square metres, yet they are designated to become NRZ2 which means increased site coverage, reduced permeability, etc. In the attempt to make the measurements clearer, we’ve left off some sites, but their width and length is similar to those depicted. They will also be just over 300 square metres.
PPS – and Filbert Street, Caulfield South. Please note: not one site over 500 square metres and the vast majority just over 300 square metres.
Please consider carefully the above table. It provides a breakdown of what’s been happening between the 2016 census and the 2021 data. ‘Medium density’ is defined as townhouses, attached dwellings, units, etc. High density is apartments over 3 storeys. Profile id. has used the 2021 census and compiled these figures for each municipality. You can access the individual data sets from this link and then type in the required council – https://profile.id.com.au/glen-eira/dwellings?WebID=10
We already know that Glen Eira is the 5th DENSEST municipality in the state – behind Melbourne, Yarra, Stonnington and Port Phillip. All of these councils are ‘inner Melbourne’ and most importantly, they include heaps more land zoned as Commercial – and that’s where most development has occurred in these municipalities. Glen Eira has about 3.3% zoned commercial compared to Stonnington which has 10% and more industrial land to boot. What this means is that development in Glen Eira has occurred everywhere in our quiet, residential streets. This has been further advanced by Glen Eira’s lack of any development levies on developers, ill considered zoning, no real tree protection to speak of, incomplete heritage protection, and a low open space levy especially for activity centres. All of these factors have accelerated overdevelopment in Glen Eira.
Yet the question of density remains irrelevant to our council. Given that we have the lowest amount of public open space per capita in the state, a drainage system that includes 100 year old pipes, 40% of the municipality covered by the Elster Creek flood plain, a pathetically low canopy tree cover, Council still wants more and more inappropriate development as evidenced by our recently adopted Housing Strategy and various structure plans. All this when research clearly shows that high rise development has only one advantage – it is cheaper for developers to build whilst at the same time is less energy efficient and certainly does nothing for essential open space.
Remember that council plans to:
Increase site coverage in NRZ areas
Decrease permeability in NRZ areas
Remove the mandatory garden requirement in ALL GRZ areas
Reduce the open space requirement in various areas
Remove the 4 metre setback in NRZ areas
Upzone scores of residential streets from 2storey to either 3 or 4 storeys
Allow (as it stands at the moment) up to 20 storey ‘discretionary’ developments in certain areas
Reduce onsite car parking requirements in various spots
Allow 6 and 8 storey heights in heritage overlays
The Glen Eira planning department is god’s gift to developers as it has been for eons. Nothing has changed except that our density is going through the roof and will continue to do so if these strategic planning documents are allowed to go through without a whimper from our residents.
Last night’s council meeting reached a new low when the Housing Strategy was passed with a vote of 4 to 3. Had both Esakoff and Cade been present we have no doubt that the vote would have been 5 to 4 against given that both these councillors had previously voted against the draft document going out to another bogus ‘consultation’. Had they been there, we would now not be stuck with a strategy that will lay the foundations for continued overdevelopment and the continued destruction of residential amenity for decades to come. Perhaps this is why the suggestion by the three opposing councillors to delay decision for another three weeks went nowhere!
Magee, Zhang, Athanasopolous and Parasol voted in favour whilst Zyngier, Pennicuik and Szmood voted against. The change of heart by Parasol leaves countless questions since he previously voted against the draft that has basically remained identical. Why the change of heart, and what pressures or carrots, may have been applied, remains the $64 question!
Residents were assailed with the usual garbage from Magee, Athanasopolous and Zhang! Sadly all that the latter could come up with was a regurgitation of the black/white dichotomies so often used by Athanasopolous – ie. we can’t have a ‘perfect’ strategy, so something is better than nothing! When the ‘something’ is so appallingly bad, lacks strategic justification, and fails to respond to community feedback, then the ‘something’ is worse than what currently exists. Besides, why the failure to ensure that what is produced is as close to ‘perfect’ right from the start? Get it right at the beginning and this solves so many issues that have to wait years and years for correction. The perfect example is the council admission of how badly they stuffed up in 2013 with zoning heritage precincts as suitable for 4 storey development!
Even more alarming are the claims made by this administration and its pro-development lackeys like Magee and his cohort. We were informed that:
If the Housing Strategy did not get up, that this would be the ‘end’ of strategic planning in Glen Eira and that there would be no further work on structure planning.
What this ruse does is to put unprecedented and we maintain illegal pressure on councillors. Here’s why:
Planning Practice Notes 90 makes it absolutely clear that the role of a council is to produce a Housing Strategy as an integral part of its land use planning.
Section 16 of all council planning schemes directs councils to “Manage the supply of new housing to meet population growth”. Without the cornerstone of a housing strategy, councils would fail to meet this objective. Refusing to carry on such work is not only a dereliction of duty by this administration, but a thinly veiled threat!
We also heard last night that the chance(s) of planning controls being introduced and formally gazetted PRIOR to the end of June 2023, when the interim DDO’s expire, was highly unlikely. This therefore means that the voting last night was basically meaningless.
Magee’s summation of the situation deserves special comment. Here is what he said in his closing remarks having moved the motion in the first place and seconded by Athanasopolous. Interestingly, he resorted to a script and read his prepared remarks. No doubt written by the likes of the planning department! –
COMMENT
Magee conveniently neglects to mention the most salient point. The current interim controls for Bentleigh, Elsternwick and Carnegie do NOT for the most part impact on our ‘local residential streets’ as claimed here. The existing DDO’s (Amendment C228) apply ONLY to the commercial and mixed use sites. THEY DO NOT COVER SURROUNDING RESIDENTIAL AREAS. Our streets do have MANDATORY PERMANENT CONTROLS as a result of the zoning introduced in 2013. These are now back in play as a result of this latest C228 amendment. All that is at stake here are the commercial and mixed use sites. The assertion that ‘more growth will occur’ in local streets as a result of refusing the housing strategy is untrue. Growth will occur regardless of the existence of this Housing Strategy thanks to Wynne’s directive that all NRZ zones will now be able to accommodate more than 2 dwellings. What the Housing Strategy achieves is to guarantee development that is unnecessary and destructive to thousands upon thousands of residents.
We already have 13 storeys in Carnegie and Elsternwick and 7 to 8 storeys in Bentleigh – all ‘discretionary’. If a developer decides to put in an application for 16 or 20 storeys his chances of success are limited given that in most instances such heights would impact on surrounding residential properties. Regardless of what council would decide in such instances, the application would end up at VCAT meaning a time lag, huge costs, and a planning scheme that currently provides MANDATORY height limits in residential areas. These are not perfect of course, but they are now in play and do protect our ‘local streets’ – contrary to what Magee has stated. Besides, most of the currently zoned RGZ areas are already built out to a maximum. The emphases should be on protecting the 13% of sites zoned GRZ. The Housing Strategy fails to do this.
So the question needs to be asked: how much does it matter if the commercial and mixed use sites do not have discretionary permanent heights assigned to them? What is the real possibility of 20 storeys in Bentleigh or Elsternwick given that both Glen Huntly Road and Centre Road abut heritage precincts and RGZ/GRZ areas. No VCAT hearing would allow a 20 storey building alongside a 4 storey building we believe in Glen Eira. We have already seen evidence of this with the first VCAT hearing for Selwyn Street, and a 16 storey application for Derby Road. Both refused by VCAT. We also have the VCAT decision on Horne street where the VCAT member criticised council for granting a permit of 8 storeys. He also stated he would have refused the application had council previously refused it. VCAT is far from perfect, but it MUST adhere to the existing planning scheme and currently our planning scheme has MANDATORY HEIGHT CONTROLS for all residential areas.
To scare monger as Magee and this administration has done is in our view unconscionable and potentially illegal.
Council’s rhetoric and unabashed hope, is that by facilitating more dwellings on a single site, this will have an impact on ‘affordability’. We are supposedly lacking smaller townhouses so changing the zoning schedules in 10,000 sites, especially in the NRZ, will permit more of these multiple dwellings to be built and the price to come down.
Despite all the spin, there is absolutely no guarantee that:
Instead of townhouses/units developers will abide by this aspiration instead of building apartment blocks where they can cram more apartments into the site. Council has already admitted that it has no control over WHAT IS BUILT.
We are also highly skeptical of the claim that ‘smaller’ apartments will have a major impact on pricing and therefore become more affordable.
East Bentleigh over the past few years has had an enormous amount of 3 or more dwellings on a single site. All one has to do is take a walk along many of the streets running off Centre Road to see what the results are. But even more telling is that we have done a search on the sold prices for some of these medium density dwellings and find that they remain far from ‘affordable’ even when compared to dual occupancy prices.
Here are some examples and they show recent results –
The first sale features one two storey townhouse in Agnes Street, East Bentleigh. There are 6 units on this combined site (nos – 8-10 Agnes Street). The property was sold on March 31st, 2022 for $1.200,000. Its size is 194 square metres!
Another example is 3/3 Heather Street, Bentleigh East. There are 3 units on this site. Unit no.3 has a land area of 77 square metres and sold on the 4th December 2019 for $975,000 – well before property prices hit their peak. Even with the current drop in prices it is still estimated to go for about a conservative $900,000
Admittedly, this is a very tiny sample of what is happening in East Bentleigh. But it should also be borne in mind that this suburb is ‘cheaper’ than properties in Caulfield North, Elsternwick, McKinnon and Bentleigh. We therefore do not believe that simply facilitating denser development on individual sites throughout all of Glen Eira will impact greatly on price. Council has no control over this anyway. What the most likely scenario will become is that we will still not have smaller townhouses, but more and more apartment blocks. Why? Because it is cheaper to built a two storey apartment block with 5 or 6 units, rather than 3 town houses. This has already occurred in Hudson Street, Caulfield North as just one example.
If the housing strategy is adopted as stands, then this is the future writ large in our view. A denser but not cheaper Glen Eira and a hell of a lot more apartments!
This is a relatively short post despite the fact that two of the most important items are up for decision this coming Wednesday – ie. the Housing Strategy and the Elsternwick Structure Plan. Both are nothing short of offensive to residents in their failure to adopt and change things according to previous community feedback. The pro-development at any cost agenda reigns supreme in both documents and neither appears to give a damn about residential amenity, the environment, overshadowing, open space, car parking, etc. etc. Nor is there any strategic justification for what is presented – it remains a series of promises, leaps of faith, and spin plus more spin.
Very, very little has changed – apart from removing heritage areas from the 4 storey zoning (which never should have happened in the first place and in many cases is already too late to repair the damage done) and the decision not to upgrade a handful of 2 storey streets into the proposed 3 storeys. Why this change is made contradicts what was stated in the first version! The end result is still thousands of properties that will be impacted by this strategy and more and more density everywhere in Glen Eira.
What we find the most offensive and disrespectful comes in the table presented below that is supposed to highlight the changes and provide some commentary.
According to the above residents are ‘confused’ and guilty of ‘misunderstanding’. Even if this is true, then surely the blame lies with council in not enunciating clearly enough what they proposed in the first place. Of course the other possibility could be that not only were residents not ‘confused’ or misunderstood, they criticised the proposals. Without having access to the full feedback, we can only surmise what was said and written. As for council’s responses, they merely regurgitate what has been said numerous times previously. No further information is provided to ensure that residents are relieved of their ‘confusion’.
We will only feature one image from the Elsternwick Structure Plan given that a picture does indeed speak a 1000 words. It portrays the future vision for part of Glen Huntly Road.
Your attendance next Wednesday is necessary is you are concerned about the future of your home and the future of Glen Eira as a whole.
The draft Neighbourhood Character Assessment Volume1 tells us that the criteria for deciding which sites are ‘suitable’ for 3 or more dwellings and hence their zoning or schedules will be changed, is based on these sites being:
Within 200 metres of a tram stop
Within 400 metres of a train station
Within 800 metres of an activity centre
In an area with a decent number of sites over 600 square metres
Not strata titled
Not affected by precinct heritage or Neighbourhood Character Overlays (page 14 of this document)
Of course, no mention is made of Special Building Overlays (SBO) (flood management) which according to the Planning Practice Notes, should exclude areas from inclusion in activity centres and their surrounds.
Here is part of the existing/current SBO which covers the area around Patterson Road in Bentleigh.
We have decided to concentrate on this area since it basically fails to meet more than half of the above stated criteria for rezoning or altering the existing schedules. There is no tram stop. Many of the streets primed for greater site coverage, etc. are certainly further than 400 metres from a train station. But most importantly, the majority of sites earmarked for change are not even close to being ‘over 600 square metres’. So what on earth is this planning department doing? What is their real criteria for selecting properties for change? How justified are these proposed changes? Or is it simply a bunch of bureaucrats sitting at a computer and drawing stupid lines on a map? There is absolutely no justification for what is being proposed!
Please look at the following carefully. According to council’s map of proposed changes, several areas along Patterson Road will change from 2 storeys to 3 storeys (marked in red). Those areas highlighted in green will become NRZ2 and hence have increased site coverage, reduced permeability requirements, and reduced rear setbacks. Here is part of this map.
When we investigate even further, we find that the vast majority of these sites are not a minimum of 600 square metres and many are sitting in the SBO overlays.
This is pathetic planning with no strategic justification whatsoever – and this is occurring in countless places throughout the municipality. Adherence to the stated criteria is frequently non-existent and so is this council’s transparency.
Your attendance is required next Wednesday (2nd November) in order to tell this council exactly what you think of their planning!
PS: HERE’S ANOTHER EXAMPLE FROM THIS AREA – UONGA ROAD
Emails have gone out to various resident groups urging folks to attend the upcoming council meeting on the 2nd November at 7.30pm at the Town Hall. This is the meeting where the contentious Housing Strategy will be voted upon, and perhaps even the Elsternwick Structure Plan.
If this Housing Strategy is voted through then the ramifications for residential amenity, density, traffic congestion, open space, and tree protection, will be major.
Here is one of these emails which we have received. Please read and tell your friends to attend.
Dear residents,
Below is a summary of the Glen Eira draft Housing Strategy and meeting. This will affect all residents if it is passed in its current form. We would like as many people to attend this meeting if you are concerned with the possibility of 4 storeys of apartments etc being built next to your home!
Given that the current Council declared a Climate Emergency it doesn’t seem to make sense to decrease the amount of green space required per block of land and increasing the built form on it. The more apartments / homes on a block the more paving and less greenery there is. Hypocrisy at its finest
If you could come to this meeting to just demonstrate that this is not an acceptable proposal, especially given we have the lowest amount of green open space of any municipality and Elsternwick has the lowest of anywhere.
Most residents are unaware of the proposed changes.
The future of Glen Eira is at stake if council adopts the draft Housing Strategy on November 2nd. You will be affected because council is proposing to:
Rezone scores of residential streets from two to three and four storeys
To remove the mandatory garden requirement in over 7,600 properties and onsite car parking
To increase site coverage, reduce permeability, and remove rear setbacks in over 3,000 properties
Yet we are told that Glen Eira has capacity for another 50,000 dwellings. All we need out to 2036 is capacity for 13,000 new dwellings.
This council is hell bent on more and more development at any cost, regardless of the impact on residential amenity, traffic congestion, climate change, density. Your voice needs to be heard.
We urge residents to attend this council meeting at 7.30pm on November 2nd.
If you have any friends who could come as well this would demonstrate to Council that they need to listen to the voice and concerns of residents. Something they seem to forget.
Glen Eira Debates 