Glen Eira Debates

The following example highlights what can be achieved when residents and council work in unison to deliver positive outcomes for the community. It features Banyule Council’s fight to ensure that the Ivanhoe Activity Centre Structure Plan contains MANDATORY, rather than ‘discretionary’ height limits.

Unlike Glen Eira City Council, Banyule was not prepared to sit back and argue that mostly ‘discretionary’ height limits was the way to go. They lobbied the Minister in conjunction with their residents and have recently achieved complete MANDATORY controls for the entire activity centre. Further Banyule council is also part of the ‘pilot program’ investigating mandatory heights for all activity centres. Moonee Valley is also part of this program. Why isn’t Glen Eira? Has our council even asked, much less uttered one single official word to put any pressure on government? The answer is NO!

We also present the Save Ivanhoe letter to Wynne asking for (and ultimately getting) mandatory heights.

The joint effort by both residents and council should be a salutary lesson for Glen Eira. And so should the processes undertaken by Banyule – ie open, transparent consultation and consensus!

Helen Carr and Luke McNamara
Co Convenors
Save Ivanhoe Residents Group
http://www.saveivanhoe.com/
info@saveivanhoe.com

Hon Richard Wynne
Minister for Planning
Victorian State Government
richard.wynne@parliament.vic.gov.au

19 September 2017

Dear Minister

RE: Mandatory Controls for the Ivanhoe Activity Centre

We are following up progress on the implementation of Mandatory Controls for the Ivanhoe Activity Centre.  This proposed action comes out of the Banyule Council community meeting in May when you stated that you were happy to introduce such controls given the extraordinary level of planning by the community and Council in the delivery of the Ivanhoe Structure Plan.

The Ivanhoe Structure Plan was developed through an unprecedented intensive and extensive Council planning process over three years. The community engagement was extensive. There were dozens of community sessions and workshops held and attended by traders, residents, developers, Council staff, Councillors and state politicians. Banyule Council employed the services of MGS Architects to do a street by street analysis of the activity centre zone. Council created a Community Consultative Committee (CCC) who met regularly for two years to work through the details of the plan.

The Save Ivanhoe Residents Group was a key player throughout this time, informing and harnessing the participation of many hundreds of residents and making a significant contribution to the outcome. Our contribution included participation on the CCC, dissemination of information to residents, ongoing discussion with Council and key stakeholders, site inspections, community forums and the review of the conceptual plans and documentation.

Over 1200 individual submissions were made to Council.

The ultimate plan delivered for the Ivanhoe Activity Centre was one where developers, traders, residents and Council agreed, through discussion, analysis and compromise on how to deliver future growth and development of the Activity Centre, in accordance with State Planning Policy.

The Structure Plan was reviewed by State Planning Department to confirm it contributed significantly to future density growth and also reviewed by a State Government Planning Panel. The guidelines for heights, setbacks and specific provisions in seven different precincts in the Activity Centre were endorsed through this process.

Despite the community request, these guidelines were not prescribed. Consequently many developers have blatantly ignored these guidelines, as have some VCAT decisions. More recently developers have been spurred on by the State Government’s changes to allowable heights. This has undermined the hard work and everything that our community and Council agreed was appropriate and reasonable to ensure growth and development but to avert rampant overdevelopment, destruction of neighbourhood character and future liveability.

A current example of over development is the 10-storey development application for 40 Upper Heidelberg Rd. This was refused by Banyule Council and is currently before VCAT. [VCAT Order: P1645/2017]. This proposal exceeds the guidelines height by 60% and has none of the required setbacks or the landscaping required for the site. It is situated on the most prominent ridgeline in Ivanhoe and will have significant negative impact on local residents, neighbourhood character and general amenity. It will be visible throughout Ivanhoe and from East Ivanhoe, Alphington and Eaglemont. It is at complete odds with local planning policy and process and will create a precedent for the area. Furthermore VCAT rejected a very similar development in the early 2000s. This earlier and similar sized proposal, although half the height, was thrown out as inappropriate due to excessive bulk and adverse impact on amenity.

As a consequence of continual developer disregard for the Activity Centre guidelines, there is widespread anger in the community that the Plan has been so undermined, discounted and ignored.

Save Ivanhoe Residents Group believes it is essential to protect the integrity of the Structure Plan for the development of the Ivanhoe Activity Centre. Therefore we are asking that you urgently approve mandatory controls on height and setbacks throughout the Activity Centre in accordance with the Structure Plan.

Furthermore we ask that you do so, or publicly signal your intent to do so, prior to 9th October VCAT Compulsory Conference regarding 40 Upper Heidelberg Rd. To do this will signal to developers that local planning guidelines are to be respected.  It will signal to the community that your government is responsive to and respects local community and Council planning processes. This is particularly urgent to give guidance to VCAT regarding all current applications scheduled for review.

We welcome development and growth in Ivanhoe. However no developer has the right to ignore the requirements of the Structure Plan and in doing so lead to the needless destruction of liveability now and in the future.

Yours sincerely

Helen Carr & Luke McNamara

CC:
Anthony Carbines. Member for Ivanhoe. E. anthony.carbines@parliament.vic.gov.au
David Davis, Shadow Minister for Planning. E. david.davis@parliament.vic.gov.au
Samantha Dunn, Vic Greens Planning Spokesperson. E. samantha.dunn@parliament.vic.gov.au

Source: http://www.saveivanhoe.com/news/183-mandatory-heights-for-ivanhoe-letter-to-minister-for-planning

We’ve received the following email from a participant at last night’s Virginia Estate forum. Several questions arise from this:

• Given this will be the largest development in Glen Eira’s history, the turnout is disappointing. More disappointing is the failure of many councillors to show up!
• The economic analysis is still to make an appearance on the VPA website and it is nearing mid December and consultation closes soon. How can residents provide meaningful comments when they have nothing to comment upon?
• Since when does council have no control over building heights? Has council already caved into whatever the developers and state government want?
• We’re supposed to have had a Community Reference Group, yet no names have been made public so how on earth can these people ‘represent’ their community when no resident knows officially whom to contact to provide ‘feedback’?!! Nor do we know how many times this committee has met. No minutes or reporting back to council has taken place. In fact, we believe that this committee was basically ‘sworn to secrecy’. Another example of sham ‘consultation’ -standing in sharp contrast to what happened with the Alphington Mill reference group where minutes and agendas were made public and everyone knew who was on the committee. Woeful and deliberate stuff Glen Eira Council!

Here’s the email:

There was a mix of about 38 people there, Hyams and Taylor attended as did Libs candidate for Bentleigh Asher Judah.

Glen Eira’s representation was minimal and in the background and consisted of a few young female officers handing out Glen Eira’s Draft Quality Design Guideline book in the hallway, with nothing about the proposed East Village Activity Centre on show.

The opening presentation/slide show from VPA’s Steve Dunn took too long, leaving not enough time for questions; and there was no systematic reporting back from each table.
There was little new information from VPA to move ahead with.

Yvonne from the Residents Consultation Group/Panel took the podium and gave the development the big tick, basically saying what is proposed is better than what is there now, with reservations on Councils ability to control the final outcomes on height limits and traffic.

Residents used question time to rehash their same concerns of traffic overflows into their streets. Traffic issues took the lion’s share of the question time.

At about 7:30 a panel of at least 8 people assembled to answer question only 3 were used the others said nothing, Ron Torres took a few questions on building heights with the development. The person from the Education Dept took a few questions on the proposed school, the main concerns here, were to do with having the drop off and pick-up areas within the Village and not on the boundary residential streets.  (traffic related again).

Other concerns were:-
/flooding on the site
/Council not being able to control the building heights as the development progress (Ron Torres took these concerns on,  and asked for submission to the activities centre consultation and mention mandatory height limits being protected under law and mostly VCAT proof.

/The soccer club from Marlborough Reserve wants another soccer field, and suggested that by moving the existing soccer field forward and using the proposed aligning open space in the Village, they could be another synthetic field in. The answer from Steve Dunn was basically this was a done deal, Ron Torres hedged on this done deal statement,  saying Marlborough reserve was council open space and nothing has been decided.

My feelings are the residents are going to get done to death here. Issues like quality of design, rooftop gardens, larger set backs on North and E/Boundary roads, sustainable design, impact on Centre Road shopping strip, lack of public transport,  and where all these thousands of hoped for workers are going to park hardly got a mention.

One suggestion was subterranean parking. If all the other buildings are going to have similar subterranean car parks, you can imagine the permeability levels of the whole site will be very low, not to mention the sense of building subterranean car parking areas in a SBO area. The VPA is very secretive on onsite car parking, digging out these car parks will remove most of the polluted soil from the site, although the disposal costs of this spoil will be huge. It will be interesting to see if and how they justify these subterranean car parking areas in an SBO area.

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!

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’

We continue our analysis of the Urban Design document and remain astounded at the continued lack of accurate information this contains, plus the failure to provide all the necessary data to provide readers with the opportunity to make fair and objective comparisons.

The screen dump provided below is supposed to represent a matrix of ‘comparable’ developments.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

What is not stated in this matrix, or what is completely misleading is the following:

• McKinnon and Ormond stations can only be less than 2km away if we interpret this measurement as meaning ‘as the crow flies’. Driving or walking distance is well over 2km for both McKinnon and Ormond. Nor is there any commentary from the other documents as to where all these potential residents are to park their cars at either of these stations!
• Left out of the matrix is the summary that the French example also has ‘light Rail and Metro running through the precinct linking it to other parts of the city’. Nor is the 35 hectares of public open space highlighted! This equates to 23.33% of the entire site being public open space in contrast to the Virginia Estate proposals of approximately 1.25% open space if we’re working on an area of 3000-4000 square metres in total.
• The residential density for this French site would also amount to 33 dwellings per hectare in contrast to the Estate’s proposals of 125 dwellings (and that’s working on the stated 3000 dwellings which we predict will be much higher)
• The Alphington Mills development is also well blessed with public transport – ie It is approximately 1.5kms from Fairfield station and 850m from Alphington station, and is well connected to the bus network.
• What is not revealed in this matrix, or anywhere, about Alphington is that of the proposed 2500 dwellings, the vast majority are to be no more than 4 storeys in height! The 2013 Development Plan for the site only has one small corner fronting Heidelberg Road at 14 storeys. The Yarra council commenting on the revised Development Plan had this to say – Council was pleased that the DPO secured maximum building heights of three to four storeys for 70% of the site” (https://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au/the-area/yarras-future/alphington-paper-mill-site-redevelopment/development-plan-overlay). This then begs the question as to why Virginia Estate is destined, according to the drafts, to have approximately 85% of the entire 24 hectare site geared up for 8 storeys!!!!!! And of course, with no strategic justification whatsoever for these proposed heights!
• We’ve already commented in our previous post on the nonsense that is stated about the Caulfield Village development.
• There are plenty of other ‘errors’ as well. For example: 324 Centre Road (page 11) is not 9 storeys. VCAT granted a permit for 8 storeys. Whilst perhaps a trivial example, we repeat that there can be no excuse for incorporating statements and information which is untrue, inaccurate and hence misleading – especially when such facts have been known for ages!

Here is part of the gazetted Development Plan for the Alphington project. Please note carefully the size of the various height proposals and how much is destined for 2-4 storeys!

On its Have Your Say webpage for the Virginia Estate development, council tells us –

So far this year we have undertaken three rounds of consultation. The feedback we received for round three clearly stated that the community required more detailed information in order to provide feedback. We have listened to this feedback and the VPA has engaged independent expert consultants to provide advice on a number of topics including urban design, parks and open space, traffic, employment and drainage. (Source: http://www.haveyoursaygleneira.com.au/east-village)

According to this blurb, residents should expect:

• Comprehensive and detailed reports. The vast majority of these reports are anything but ‘comprehensive and detailed’. Further, why council couldn’t provide the documents in question on its own site instead of referring residents to the Planning Authority site via a link that requires further searching is open to question.
• That what council writes is unambiguous, accurate and transparent. It isn’t! For example the impression created is that the VPA has engaged (read ‘paid for’) consultants’ reports that are ‘objective’ and ‘independent’. Far from it. The Urban Design report on page 4 states –

MGS Architects Pty. Ltd have been engaged by The Gillon Group, Make Property Group and Abacus Property Group to develop an Urban Design Report to inform the East Village development in Bentleigh East, Victoria. (page 4)

The same is true for Environmental Conditions report –

Senversa Pty Ltd was engaged by MAKE EBRB Dev Nominee Pty Ltd. (MAKE) to prepare a summaryof environmental conditions for the proposed East Village Precinct, Bentleigh East, a 24 hectare parcel of land (with multiple titles) on the corner of East Boundary and North Roads, Bentleigh East (thePrecinct) (page 1)

Reading the Urban Design effort we find that many sections are nothing more than a regurgitation of the original Gillon propaganda, practically verbatim, that came out a few years ago. (By the way, the East Village Gillon site has suddenly disappeared!)

More importantly the VPA website doesn’t include as yet the most contentious documents – ie commercial assessment and social infrastructure. (See: https://vpa.vic.gov.au/project/east-village-strategic-site/p/east-village-key-ideas-objectives/). If these appear in December/January, then that means residents will not have had the opportunity to read, much less digest the so-called ‘information’ before this consultation concludes. Hardly an ideal situation!

As a brief overview of what we’ve gleaned thus far, please note:

• Of 400 trees reviewed on the site, only 5 are deemed to be of ‘very high value’ and only another 73 are categorised as ‘high value’. Another 150 are seen to be of ‘medium retention value’. Sadly the gate is left wide open when this evaluation is followed by – “If designing around these trees is not feasible or practical, removal and replacement would be an acceptable compromise”. Bye, bye trees!
• It is now mooted to be at least 2 supermarkets and no mention of size, capacity, etc.
• The so called traffic report only looks at the current state of affairs – not what it will be like with another 3000+ apartments and hundreds upon hundreds of additional cars clogging the roads. Readers should also take note of the photographs that are supposed to represent traffic conditions on North Road and East Boundary Road. We can only suppose that there has been some good Photoshopping, or that these images were snapped in the middle of the night or daybreak!

There is much, much more that could be said – and we will in ensuing posts. We repeat that in our view this is not consultation. Until residents are provided with realistic data that is justified, explained, and open to debate, then we are simply being lead down the garden path to an amendment that will leave little room for change and community input! It will be a mirror image of Caulfield Village – a fait accompli!