Hi Guys
I'm not sure that any of you guys noticed, but Elizabeth Farrelly wrote an extensive piece attacking
the Rozelle development in yesterdays Sydney Morning Herald. It took up half the OPINION section.
Here is the link
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/developers-show-their-stripes-all-over-town-20120606-1zwpu.html
The Article is below:
Ever get the sense the bad guys are winning? The Planning Minister, Brad Hazzard, promises this month a package of "very radical" Planning Act reforms. Well, Mr Hazzard, reform this.
Our planning system, like our tax system, seems increasingly geared to screw the little guys while rich douchebags suck it dry.
Consider. I work at home, in a terrace, reportedly Mr Hazzard's preferred form of housing and soon to spread across far westburbia. On this at least, Brad and I are as one.
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But in a terrace, the biggest challenge is light. Even with skylights and extreme spatial ingenuity, dark pockets persist. My writing space, for reasons best left obscure, inhabits such a pocket.
A couple of years back, driven to resolve this (and inspired in part by Michael Pollan's wonderful A Place of My Own), I lodged a DA for a writing studio at the end of the garden. A tiny, see-through room on stilts, it would have surveilled our backlane drug deals, made minimum shadow and followed precedent up and down the street without precluding the off-street parking so beloved of the council. Exactly the kind of urban enrichment you might think a contemporary council would wish for.
Well, luvvies. What a palaver. Visiting planners spoke in reverential tones about urban design principles, floorspace ratios (which would have risen by about 0.25 per cent) and heritage laneways. My inner curmudgeon, never far away, came rapidly to the fore.
"Good god!" I felt like shouting. "I wrote the wretched laneways policy, and much of your urban design policy, when you were still feeding your Tamagotchi. And it's not about sterilisation!"
How wrong. The planners, unamused, gave me two choices: withdraw and save them the paperwork, or take refusal. I took refusal.
That's the fate of small, careful, stitchings onto the urban jacket. If, however, your proposal is truly outrageous and enduringly desecratory - alienating harbour frontage, blocking views, wrecking high streets, destroying villages, generating hectares of floating plastic or sucking community lifeblood - then yes siree, you have a real chance of getting up.
Now, suddenly, Sydney abounds with such schemes. The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, swears his opposition to Part 3A. Yet, of the 50 Part 3A determinations his government handed down in its first six months, only two were refused.
Three current schemes are illustrative. Not all are 3A but all are environmentally execrable, all weirdly linked to the Obeid-Tripodi traduction of our planning system and all once considered dead, or shrunk - yet have lately bounced back, bigger and uglier than ever.
They are: the Balmain Tigers redevelopment (cruelly named Rozelle Village for the community it will destroy); the Blackwattle Bay function centre; and the floating triffid that is the Rose Bay Marina, relentless in its efforts to grow another arm.
Rozelle Village started at 10 storeys, linked to the then metro-to-be. By 2010, when it was first refused, it was 13 storeys. Now, though the metro is long-dead, the proposal has been accepted as ''state significant'' under Part 3A (by outgoing minister Tony ''ICAC'' Kelly) and has almost tripled in size into two towers, 20 and 27 storeys respectively, with a massive five-storey retail podium and a 7.65 floorspace ratio. In Rozelle!
With 304 flats, the ''village'' has enough height to overshadow Darling Street all winter and enough retail (20,000 square metres) to kill the real Rozelle village as dead as Westfield has Bondi Junction. It also has 834 car spaces; almost three per dwelling. Just what Sydney's most congested peninsula needs.
The proponent is the supposedly carbon-conscious Tipping Point Institute, "a group of dedicated professionals who believe that success is not found in the pursuit of personal gain, but rather in pursuing goals that benefit society at large … "
The sale of the Tigers site to Rozelle Village (the Tipping Point Institute) was packaged by Benny Elias, board member of both the Tigers and Rozelle Village (from which he resigned before the sale). The project manager is Kym Lennox, a former RTA bureaucrat who has worked for the Obeid family.
Lennox is also project managing the function centre application for the concrete batching sites at Blackwattle Bay in Ultimo. Ben Elias's brother Joe - sole director of All Occasion Cruises (known for their raunchy strip shows) - is the named proponent, but Ben was reportedly involved in the early stages, along with Eddie Obeid's son Eddie Jr.
The lease was controversially won in 2009, when Joe Tripodi was the Minister for Waterways and Sydney Maritime had an acting chairman for a month. The Elias bid, for an 18-berth marina, was higher than its competitors, but partly because it included a non-conforming function centre.
For three years the site has been used for commercial boating as the 2002 masterplan intended. Now, the function centre has reared again, contradicting the plan by blocking views from Wentworth Park and inhibiting public access to the waterfront.
Similar issues have already resulted from the Rose Bay Marina, as built, and will be greatly intensified if the proposed extension - blogged against by Malcolm Turnbull and the Greens alike - goes ahead.
Tripodi's gutting of Maritime's ''landowner's consent'' policy that had governed harbour leases for a century (limiting jetties, for example, to 16 metres) facilitated Addenbrooke's 2006 proposal of a 128-boat marina. It was knocked back by both council and court, but in 2009 the court approved a smaller, 76-vessel version, without its third, eastern arm.
Now the eastern arm is back, boofier than ever. An 80-metre pontoon is proposed, with 46 more three-storey plastic boats, concomitantly reducing the far prettier, less intrusive swing moorings. It's that old ''no means yes'' developers' mantra.
My writing studio is now 50 storeys with mirror glass, subterranean robot parking and ground-floor strip shows. Zero carbon, natch. I'm just looking for the right person to lunch.
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Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/developers-show-their-stripes-all-over-town-20120606-1zwpu.html#ixzz1x9t1adcU
