Giralang Shops New New New Development Application

Hopefully this one gets through, and that external commercial interests don’t get in the way again.

I’ve sent an email to ACTPLA supporting this!

I think the majority of the residents would prefer woolworths shops to residential, or even worse whats there now. Everyone who supports this needs to be more vocal, it’s too easy to sit back and hope for the best.

The traditional IGA small shops sadly is very unlikely – as it seems Woolworths is the only one who is prepared to redevelop the entire site.

what about an IGA or similar,a take away,a baker,a hairdresser,a news agent and maybe even a resturant(vietnamese would be nice!)…Did i just have a case of De Ja Vous!

It will be interesting to see what happens this time, if my memory serves the last rejection was it was due to trying to get a group centre size retail into a suburban space. Arguably the new DA should fair better on those grounds.

The current situation is a total eyesore and demolition would be a good option if this DA bites the dust.

Interestingly if this DA does fail there is nothing that happens. From what I can work out, a resident or similar could lodge a ‘contrary to lease purpose’ claim which would then force ACTPLA to review, and from then they can issue a fine or two, ask the owner to be compliant, but it could get caught up for years.

It would appear that there is no legal basis for the ACT Govt to say look you’ve had 3 or so goes at getting a compliant DA up, you failed, lets return to the market and re-auction the site, you’ll get some compensation for the remaining lease, less demolition and other costs.

Unfortunately this is not entirely a unique situation, there are several service stations that are also eyesores around the place, and other suburban shops that are probably not far off failing, still its been most of the decade since the shops started deteriorating, so anything moving forward has got to be an improvement.

lobster – don’t tell us, tell ACTPLA!

I’d prefer to see Canberra moving back to the original (pre-Woolworths) plan of local centres providing fresh (as in, recently picked and nearly ripe) fruit and veggies. Just make sure to mention that you don’t want Woolies or Coles in the local shops, and make a point of shopping there even though it will cost about 10-20% more than the Woolies in Belconnen Mall.

Woolworths “the picked while hard and green 12 months ago and stored in a cold room until there was an opportunity to sell you small bitter apples people”. Their stuff is cheap for a reason.

I live directly accross from the shops and I really don’t care what they do as long as they do something.

bd84 said :

I was surprised that the developer did not appeal the decision.

They did. They lost.

Tetranitrate said :

The only “vocal minority” were the owners of Superbarn in Kaleen.

They weren’t the only ones. IGA Kaleen and the owners of the Kaleen group centre also had their say, plus (I’m guessing) a few residents.

Anything would be better than the graffiti covered shooting gallery it seems to have become. 1.5 cheers for the spirit of compromise.

Ainslie and O’Connor are thriving too. What these smaller shopping centres need is an Aldi supermarket and plenty of apartments nearby. It will be interesting to see the new Braddon developments work out with retail at ground level, commercial on the first floor and then four levels of apartments. This is what they have in most of Europe.

The Kaleen shops got in on the action already. I thought Barr changed the planning laws to remove commercial interests as a basis for kbjections to DAs (amongst a whole heap of less desirable cahnges).

It almost looks as though they’ve taken the eraser to part of the last plan and gone “see, now the woolworths is smaller” possibly with the intention down the track of applying to extend the trading floor into the pre-constructed but empty space.

When I saw this come out it got me thinking about Lawson, surely the plans for Lawson will include a similarly sized development to that proposed for Giralang. If thats the case wouldn’t it be in the best interest of the ACT govt to have that size develoment at Giralang rejected to attract a higher price for the Lawson site.

The ridiculous part is Giralang residents have been forced to suffer such an eyesore for so long, what happens if this development is rejected?