Glen Eira Debates

When vitally important decisions are being made, we believe it is incumbent on councillors to proffer statements that are accurate. Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course, but espousing unfounded views and presenting them as ‘facts’ is unacceptable. Even if ignorance is partly to blame for such announcements, it does not absolve councillors from their duty of proper oversight.  Their role is to analyse, question, and provide a rationale that will stand up to full scrutiny. This has not been done – especially at the last council meeting.

Two important items were presented at the last council meeting – the draft Housing Strategy and the Caulfield Station Structure Plan. Both items have the potential to dramatically change residential amenity and the environment in Glen Eira and thus affect every resident.

In regard to the Caulfield Structure Plan the draft proposes one height of 25 storeys, and for the MRC freehold land 12 storeys. All heights are discretionary rather than mandatory which of course means that they could ultimately be higher! No urban design evidence, nor overshadowing impacts were provided for this item. Even in the heritage precinct of Derby Road, the proposal is for a discretionary 8 storey limit. This of course begs the question as to why other heritage commercial zones in Bentleigh, Elsternwick and Carnegie were allocated a mandatory four storey height limit. Are we to assume that some areas are more ‘heritage worthy’ than others?

We take particular issue with some of the comments made by Athanasopolous and Zyngier as outlined below:

ATHANASOPOLOUS:  on the issue of heights in commercial areas this councillor argued that Glen Eira has little chance of achieving mandatory controls in commercially zoned land and certainly not in areas zoned Activity Centre Zone. Conclusion? – that discretionary heights are better than nothing – thus absolving council for even trying! He went on to challenge anyone to come up with ‘evidence’ that this was not the case when he stated that people: Can’t come up with where mandatory controls have been given for 12 storeys in an activity centre structure plan. People can’t even provide that evidence.

ZYNGIER: basically reiterated this line of argument and said that council has no control over commercial zones.

Both statements are factually incorrect! Other councils have been successful in acquiring mandatory height limits for their commercial strips and are nowhere near 25 storeys as proposed in this draft structure plan. Whilst it is true that ultimately the Minister must sign off on such amendments, the primary question should be: WHY HAVE THESE OTHER COUNCILS BEEN SUCCESSFUL? Clearly councils do have ‘control’ over what they propose and what they pursue or are willing to accept. In Glen Eira, we start from the proposition that worse could be imposed so let’s go for 25 storeys as a starter!

We have taken the time and trouble to go through gazetted amendments from other councils which have all had mandatory height controls enacted in their precincts. All of these are well within the 10 year limit that Athanasopolous asked for. They even include some Activity Centre Zones, where none of the heights come close to what Glen Eira is asking for.

Please consider the following table carefully and then reflect on Glen Eira’s approach and the validity of what some councillors espouse.

As we stated in our previous post, the lack of detailed analyses by those councillors who endorsed the housing strategy is simply mind boggling. Not one of them mentioned or analysed any of the following:

• Land capacity out to 2036 estimates that the municipality has scope (available land) for  50,000 net new dwellings. Housing projections state that all we need are approximately 13,000.
• They simply accepted the assumption that more dwellings means greater affordability.
• Removing the mandatory garden requirement will be ‘compensated’ by the landscape requirements – which of course aren’t specified in any document. All that we have is waffle and generalisations.
• How increasing site coverage in the NRZ will ‘fit in’ with the climate emergency, urban forest strategy, etc.

By way of contrast, the best summation on the evening came from Esakoff. We have uploaded her statements and urge all residents to listen and consider what this means.

To further illustrate what is in store, here is part of the Housing Framework Plan. We’ve chosen the GRZ areas in East Bentleigh. All the streets presented in the darker orange now find themselves in the Substantial Change Area 2. This means: no mandatory garden requirement; tree canopy retention only where ‘practical’; reduction of rear setbacks and potentially lessening of onsite parking requirements. In other words, cramming more and more into these sites.

Finally, Athanasopolous cited the changes as only impacting a ‘small’ amount of properties. A public question asked on Tuesday night provided the answers as to the number of sites that will be affected by these proposals. In the GRZ Substantial Change Area 1 the answer provided was 7,624! The sites impacted in NRZ were said to be 3,075. That’s a grand total of 10,699 that will be severely impacted by the proposed changes. Glen Eira currently has 65,000 residential properties, but far less sites – since many are multi-storey containing many apartments. This is also true for the current dwelling proportion in GRZ but at a lower scale than the commercial areas. Even accepting this, we still estimate that roughly 15 to 20% of Glen Eira residents will face potential developments without the necessary strategic justification. Furthermore, if we assume that only 10% of these 10,000+ sites will increase their net dwellings by one (ie from 2 dwellings to 3 dwellings) that equates to another net 1000 plus dwellings. This is of course a very conservative estimate since the prognostications for ‘take up’ far exceed 10% and the likelihood of only a one net dwelling increase is again highly conservative. These proposed changes alone could deliver thousands upon thousands of net new dwellings with absolutely no guarantee that they will be cheaper, will assist in increasing our tree canopy, or assist in fighting climate change.

These figures also need to be seen in the context of what else is planned for Glen Eira. We should add in another 3000 at least for East Village, another 4000 under the Caulfield Station structure plan as stated in the Charter housing analysis. None of these account for what else might be in the pipeline throughout Glen Eira.

The pro-development agenda of these 5 councillors and this administration is continuing to destroy this municipality!

Our plaudits must go to Esakoff, Parasol, Cade and Szmood following last night’s council meeting. These are the four councillors who voted AGAINST the current draft Housing Strategy and highlighted the issues that were unacceptable with what was being proposed. Sadly, the pro-development lobby (aka, Athanasopolous, Magee, Zyngier, Pilling and Zhang) carried the vote 5 to 4.

It’s not simply that the latter voted in favour of putting the housing strategy out for consultation. It is that their arguments in favour of the draft were superficial, misleading, inaccurate, and deliberately avoided mention of the most contentious aspects of the draft. All of this leads us to question whether any of these 5 councillors actually bothered to read the relevant 589 pages. We doubt it!

Cr Zyngier didn’t even utter one single word about the CONTENT of the draft or its recommendations. His focus was improving ‘consultation’ recommendations. All terrific, but how about an analysis of what is being proposed and commenting on those things in order to provide residents with the rationale behind the vote? Magee of course used the old heart strings ploy of ‘where will my children live’ totally ignoring the fact that the consultants provided their estimates of an existing land capacity for 50,000 net new dwellings when our projected housing needs were 13,000 by 2036. Pilling and Zhang merely mumbled their way through the obvious – again without once mentioning the potential negatives.

Athanasopolous was the major culprit. Either he has never bothered to read the Glen Eira planning scheme in order to understand what is currently permitted in NRZ zones, or he follows the strategy of never let the truth interfere and derail the spin. We will provide an indepth commentary on his efforts in our next post. At best, they displayed sheer ignorance. At worst they were deliberate attempts at deception and camouflage.

In contrast, the opposing councillors highlighted the actual detail contained in the draft and the impacts these proposals would have on residents and their amenity in the years to come. They also questioned the underlying assumption and justification for the proposed rezonings and schedule changes  – ie build more and there would magically be housing affordability!

When something as important as this document is up for decision it is incumbent that all councillors consider the full implications. Residents need to hear the reasoning behind the votes. They need to be convinced that something which is going to affect their lives has been given due consideration and is not a vote that follows any state or federal political party agenda. Most importantly, they need to be convinced that councillors have actually read what has been put in front of them and questioned vigorously the data, the conclusions, and the assumptions. This we maintain was not done by the 5 councillors in question.

Watch this space for a detailed analyses of what happened last night.

Council has finally released its draft Housing Strategy. The proposals will impact hundreds upon hundreds (if not thousands) of residents – without the necessary justification or evidence. Why do we think so?

1. The various documents state over and over again that Glen Eira has the land CAPACITY to meet our projected housing needs of roughly 13,000 net new dwellings by 2036. If this is the case, then why do we need to rezone and facilitate more and more development?
2. Much of the data provided is highly tenuous and conflicts with both Victoria in Future prognostications, as well as the Bureau of Statistics data.
3. The assumption that building more and more will reduce prices is a fallacy and there is plenty of published evidence that would refute, or at least challenge this claim.
4. Council has an Urban Forest Strategy, a declining tree canopy,  and a Climate Emergency policy, yet paradoxically is prepared to reduce setbacks, remove mandatory garden and parking requirements, and tellingly, instead of attempting to reduce the height island effect, council is prepared to reduce permeability so that more dwellings can occupy certain sites.
5. Our conclusion is that this Housing Strategy is Amendment C184 in disguise – except that it will now extend to all of the municipality instead of only Bentleigh and Carnegie.

The important detail is presented below.

What the above implies about the potential zoning and schedule changes are:

• Currently land zoned NRZ has a 50% site coverage, a 25% permeability requirement and a 4 metre rear setback. The above screen dump makes it clear that the new NRZ zone will in all probability become 60% site coverage, 20% permeability, and a removal of the 4 metre setback entirely.
• The current GRZ zoning allows an 11 metre height maximum plus various setbacks for the upper second and third level of the buildings. There is also a mandatory garden requirement of 25% to 35% depending on the size of the property. Again, council is proposing to remove this so once again we can have more development on the site. Rear setbacks are also likely to go.

Council has provided the following map that is now the Framework Plan. Surely far more detail could have been provided such as clear differentiation of colours rather than what is shown as gradations of pink. Why not clear blues, greens, yellows that stand out? Or would this reveal too much to residents?

From this map it would appear that all Neighbourhood Centres zoned GRZ will have the mandatory garden requirement removed. Please consider the above map carefully and try to decipher whether you will be impacted by these changes.

There is much, much, more that could be said about this and council’s overall approach to consultation.  4 weeks is not enough to plough through 589 pages on the housing strategy itself. Consultation requires more than a ‘survey’ that in the past has not asked the right questions. Nor is it appropriate that council publishes a 1000 page agenda several days before vital decisions are to be made. How many more times will it be necessary to remind this council that the ombudsman recommended at least 5 working days for the publication of agendas?

We urge all residents to contact their councillors and to lobby hard for the rejection of this Housing Strategy!