4 January 2011

Development application Casey

| far_northact
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I came back from a lovely holiday to have a letter in my mail box from ACT Planning and Land Authority indicating the vacant block opposite my front yard has received the following development application:

“Multi-dwelling 45 Unit, 3 storey building, basement carkparking” etc

Must be confident that it will be going ahead, given the developer has erected a huge advertisement on the block, and that it’s listed on ‘all homes’.

Shame that only 5 owner occupiers exist in any of the 4 blocks adjacent.

Before anyone carries on – YES, I knew that someone would build opposite my new place, but I am sure that when I researched my purchase, the land was only originally zoned for standard housing (i.e. a normal townhouse/satellite units – maximum 2 stories high). I don’t object to development of a suburb – but 3 stories and 45 units on a block the size of one that would normally fit approx 8-10 terrace style houses!! Not only will it block my (albeit pathetic) view and breezes, but the cars and congestion will be massive for a tiny street.

Is it worth bothering to express my ‘representations’, given that a maximum of 5 of us could possibly complain?

Any (helpful) suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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Not sure why people would want to live in a 45 unit complex in Casey. There are many other such developments close to shopping centres, transport links and work rather than being stuck out there.

Your’re fracked! Sorry to be blunt.

Yeah well there going up all around me, one being built across the road now, looks like I will have to close curtains more often.

(not sure where the quote button has gone) Sticking up random blocks of apartments in suburbs is not going to make Canberra into Paris. Hell, they’ve made wall-to-wall blocks of flats in Kinston, and it’s not Paris either.

Now, if they planned it out properly (cannot fathom what the P stands for in ACTPLA), they might be able to create a fake Paris by building lots of blocks of apartments together, but plonking them next to normal houses is not the way to go. They should not do it. I guess someone is going to get rich out of it.

It would still be worthwhile having a look at their plans and checking how many carparks they are allocating etc. You can quite legitimately send in a comment on there not being enough parks for the properties, if that will clog a small street with parking, or if paths and driveways will be directly opposite your house or on blind corners (and could be better sited elsewhere etc).

You can also check that they are within the stated limits – 3 storeys. Developers are prone to pushing their luck in Canberra and hoping noone notices.

troll-sniffer2:43 pm 04 Jan 11

Imagine if you will… if Canberran NIMBYs had been around when the great cities of the world were being built!

Imagine most European cities that currently have 4 and more storeys cheek by jowel over cobbled laneways… replaced by insipid separate dwellings that the average Canberran seems to value so highly…

Imagine travelling to New York and exploring the vibrant streets of the lower east side, Queens, the Bronx etc, full of idyllic little dog boxes with the owners carefully synchronising their Victas to last all weekend…

Imagine attending the Notting Hill Festival in London and seeing not a character-filled road with people enjoying their joie-de-vivre from balconies overlooking the revelry, but a bunch of suburbanites yelling out that they can’t hear the bloody cricket on the plasma…

Imagine you had a choice of an apartment on the Champs-Elysees, or a soul-destroying little dogbox in a meaning less street in a meaningless suburb full of rows and rows of ticky tacky houses in Los Angeles… or for that matter in Gungahlin.

There’s more to life than a doggy little dogbox on a doggy little Gungahlin suburb with a carefully tended 35 sq metres of lawn you can’t do any meaningful thing on, in a street of insipid rugby league-following public bloody servants whose idea of an exciting night is to take the back road to the Gungahlin Lakes Club for a tasteless serve of club food, whose life is so empty that when a building that does not conform to their outdated desire for monotonous suburbia is proposed they threaten to move out because life is going to be so terrible…

The OP would appear to be a glass half empty type, an opportune whinger rather than an optimist.

far_northact1:45 pm 04 Jan 11

Thanks for clarifying Deadly. So to answer my original post question, since I should have read the ACT block plan properly, there is not really any point complaining – I’ll just suck-it-up 🙂

I’ll just use this place as a rental in 2012 when they finish building the monstrosity. Hell, judging from the developers promotion of the “October 2010 rent assessment”, a 2 bdrm box in Casey rents at $400-430 a week!! Imagine the rental returns in 2012……

DeadlySchnauzer1:39 pm 04 Jan 11

If you have a look at page 21 of that document you will see it specifically divides those b8/b9 areas into Multi Unit (light red) and Medium Density (dark red). The block in question is dark red, while the ones around it are light red.

It seems these correspond to the RZ3 (light red) and RZ4 (dark red) planning zones. Which are:
RZ3 – 2 storeys + basement + attic up to 8.5m tall
RZ4 – 3 storeys + basement + attic up to 12m tall

So unfortunately thats why this block can have a big set of apartments where those other blocks only have town houses.

What are you complaining about? They are beautiful dog boxes.

far_northact1:12 pm 04 Jan 11

Perhaps its just my (mis)-interpretation:according to the scribbles on this
http://www.actpla.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/19795/TA2010-31.pdf
(marked as page 23 of the document)
The land is marked (B9 – medium density)
But two other blocks marked the same (b9) (near the block in question) are just standard town houses, with those “satellite” units above the garage. So I may have incorrectly assumed it only meant two story – on earlier pages the block in question is marked dark maroon.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of Canberra there is a giant war room of chimps of computers.

DeadlySchnauzer12:37 pm 04 Jan 11

If its the one I am thinking of ( http://www.allhomes.com.au/ah/act/sale-residential/david-miller-crescent-casey-canberra/1316774055411 ), then its on an RZ4 zoned block which is pretty much the “do whatever the hell you want” zoning for developers.

I would guess that the block has always been RZ4 zoned, as that kind of core zoning is set by the guberment when planning the suburb (its not something a developer can just request). If it had originally been RZ1 (standard residential), then there would have had to have been a public consultation period by the guberment to get it changed to RZ4.

Good luck.

I ended up moving out of Braddon (sadly about 18 months too early) to escape the abominations that they were building – it was the only option left to me.

Don’t be fooled – “3 storey with underground parking” means 4 stories – they’ll have attic rooms which means higher rooflines, and the “underground” parking is just a shallow pit – half the height of the carpark will be above ground. Drive around Braddon and you’ll get the idea.

Get out while you can and use your vote appropriately at the next election.

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