7 Bowen Street Chatswood NSW 2067.

Chatswood is already overpopulated and there are a number of developments already underway in the area. To knock down these character filled properties is a shame and will overcrowd an already popular street, especially on weekends with the nearby pub traffic.

There is very little new residential construction on the west side of Pacific Highway.

While the development has received Council approval, this proposal seeks to increase the height of the development (refer document Variation of Clause 4.6 Height) from a maximum building height of 18m to a proposed building height of 20.4m – equivalent to an extra story being added.

This is a cause for concern. It demonstrates the utter disdain that the planners and developers of this site have for Council’s Local Environment Plan, Council’s own considered decisions as articulated by motions passed in council meetings and the Willoughby community as a whole. It sets a precedent for changes to this and other developments despite Council having stipulated height limits.

The CEO and any Councillor involved should hold the line that Council stipulated on 3 August 2021 at 18m maximum building height. The CEO and any Councillor should reject any height or FSR increases for this development.

Let’s clear up a factual inaccuracy also, the Variation of Height cites the WLEP2012 and the associated Height Map as defining an 18m height zoning for the subject site (i.e. the eastern side of Bowen St and some of Moriarty Rd).
WRONG: Under the WLEP2012 the subject site is zoned “I2” with a maximum height of 8.5m – not 18m.

Some background:

After much public and Council research and effort in putting views forward on this contentious development, Willoughby Council discussed and reached a split majority council decision on 3 August 2021 to grant the site an amendment to WLEP2012 to a maximum height of 18m and FSR maximum of 2:1. This was a direct rebuttal of the proposed 24m height requested in the planning submission.
That the height, and hence no doubt number of apartments and $profit, is being sought to increase again demonstrates 1) disdain for Council, but also sets a precedent that other variations are likely to follow.

Council discussion and voting proceeded on the basis that the maximum height would be 18m – specifically:

1. Note the submissions and public hearing report received and proposed responses to feedback on the draft Planning Proposal for 1A-29 Bowen Street and 6-18 Moriarty Road, Chatswood and draft Site Specific DCP Provisions at 1A-29 Bowen Street and 6-18 Moriarty Road, Chatswood following the public exhibition period.
2. Support amendments to Willoughby Local Environmental Plan 2012 relating to 1A-29 Bowen Street and 6-18 Moriarty Road, Chatswood as outlined in Attachment 9 subject to the areas currently identified to have heights of 20 and 24 metres being reduced to a maximum of 18 metres as well as the FSR on the entire area being restricted to a maximum of 2:1 and forward to the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment for finalisation.
3. Support an additional amendment to the WLEP 2012 Land Reservation Acquisition (LRA) map to remove the application of this map to the land at 25-29 Bowen Street and add to Willoughby DCP provisions to allow for a future land acquisition by Council to permit a cul-de-sac on part of the land at 23-29 Bowen Street.
4. Endorse amendments to the site specific controls in Section D.2.16.22 of Willoughby Development Control Plan as modified subject to the removal of the requirement for extension / construction of a median strip in Mowbray Road West/ Bowen Street intersection to prevent right turn movements.
5. Delegate authority to the Chief Executive Officer to make any minor amendments to the final planning proposal and DCP which do not alter the intent.

To both points 2 & 5 above, the CEO and any Councillor should reject any height or FSR increases for this development. The CEO and any Councillor involved should hold the line that Council drew at 18m maximum building height.

Comment on Proposed Buildings for Bowen Street & Moriarty Road, Chatswood.

The following is my opinion of the information that has been put on public display so as to draw out comment about the proposed construction. However, there appears to be some errors in the documentation and I would think that the whole package should be returned to the applicant to fix.
I note that there is a long comment already supplied about the height of the two, proposed, five-storey buildings exceeding the allowable limit and other issues. There is a second brief comment stating that the home units around the area are of low height (three stories, to be exact) and I read this to be a criticism.
I have lived in the area nearby since 1978. The reason the three-storey limit was introduced was that it was used as a trade-off to the West Ward community to offset the then proposed high-rise of the Chatswood CBD Metropolis. The Councillors at the time pleaded with the community to accept the proposed high-rise CBD and in return they promised to introduce a three-storey limit for the western side of the highway in what was called Locality J, which includes the proposed Bowen Street construction. I can remember the anguish on the Councillor’s faces hoping for the acceptance by the community of the offer of a high-rise CBD for a three-storey limit close by.
In addition, the proposed demolition is of a whole street old workers cottages representative of the era and it would be a pity too see them go.
If the plan is to proceed, could at least one of those cottages be retained and incorporated as part of the Communal Area for those who will reside in the two proposed five-story buildings. It could be used for meetings and recreational use plus other community activities.

TRAFFIC AND PARKING ASSESSMENT REPORT
This report if fraught with problems.
The author should be aware that the streets around the area including Bowen, are ’choc-a-block’ full of parked cars day and night. The plethora of restricted parking signs should alert to this. There are two shifts of parked cars each day. The night shift are the vehicle owners whose residences do not provide sufficient off-street parking. These people drive away in the morning and return in the evening. Those spaces which are left by the night shift are taken up by the day shift drivers who work in the Chatswood CBD or Sydney City CBD (who then travel by train to the Sydney CBD) and don’t want to pay for all day parking or can’t afford it.
The number of parking spaces provided in the proposed development is grossly insufficient. The minimum number should be at least one off-street parking space per bedroom plus an extra percentage more. The extra percentage is to allow for couples who co-habitate in the same room. For example, a three-bedroom house nearby held six persons each with their own vehicle, that is six cars for a three-bedroom house. In addition, there can be self-employed tradespersons who have a work vehicle plus an extra two cars for private use of the couple.
Furthermore, if you look around the area, many of the garage/vehicle spaces are used for storage, including brand new houses. Cars are parked elsewhere than the allocated car parking spaces.
Page 25 of the Traffic Report states:
“An indication of the existing traffic conditions on the road network in the vicinity of the site is provided by peak period traffic surveys undertaken as part of this traffic study. The traffic surveys were undertaken on the 8th of May 2022 at the Bowen Street and Mowbray Road intersection.”
The 8th May 2022 is a Sunday. It would seem improbable that a Sunday assessment would be representative of the Monday to Saturday traffic flow plus the time of the Sunday assessment should also have been stated.
Furthermore, some time ago, Willoughby Council had initiated a comprehensive traffic study of the Mowbray Road & Pacific Highway Intersection. Basically, the traffic flow at this intersection was said to be a disaster and the conclusion in the report said that nothing can be done to improve the situation and the situation will become worse. The comprehensive data in this report should have been referenced in the Bowen Street Traffic report. Furthermore, every few years Council initiates traffic flow reports of the local streets and all this information should be available. For example, in my local residential street close by to Bowen, about 20 years ago the traffic flow was 3300 cars per day. This is one of the reasons the through road access in Bowen to Moriarty was closed off (plus a few other streets near Bowen) to stop ‘rat-running’ cars bypassing the Pacific Highway & Mowbray Road intersection.

URBAN DESIGN REPORT
It is somewhat difficult to comment here on the Urban Design Report because it deviates from the normal basic convention in that there are no page numbers provided to highlight specific points. I will use the page numbers shown on my pdf reader although sometimes such readers do not correspond with the actual page – they can be one or two pages out.
On about page 4 there is a section headed Contents. On the left-hand side of the Contents list is a computer-generated aerial view of the subject site and area around. This photo could deceive the reader as it is not true to form. It displays everything as blocks (blocks of units) with flat roofs, however, many of those blocks are houses with pitched roofs. As an example, the South-Western corner of the intersection of Mowbray Road and the Pacific Highway is shown to contain three Home Unit type looking blocks. On that site is in fact a Church with a steeply pitched roof; a Sunday School; and a toilet block. I wouldn’t want someone on an Approval Panel to be misled by the computer-generated picture to think the area is already a mass of home units and adding the Bowen Street proposal won’t make any difference to the streetscape of the local area.
On or about page 8 there is a section headed Site Analysis: Local Context. The page displays a coloured map showing the open space areas or Green Open Space (sic) coloured Green. The Commercial space (sic) is coloured Yellow.
Much of the detail on that map is misleading.
The word Commercial is covering the Dive Site for the Metro Train. It is a building site and understood will become more high-rise units once the train is operating. On the opposite or western side of the highway are some commercial properties at ground level but with residential above. That area is mixed use and not pure commercial.
Most of the Green Open Space public areas don’t exist as shown on the map. For instance, the area marked Chatswood Golf Course is a private golf course and not accessible by the general public. If you step foot on it you are asked to leave. If you don’t leave you are considered to be Trespassing. The area marked Chatswood High School is a flood-lit single rectangular football field covered with high quality synthetic grass. It is booked out for use by clubs & sporting associations and is often completely full of people as the single football space can be cut into four or six smaller sections for smaller children to practice some form of club organised football, soccer, hockey or athletics. Some of the green area shown on the lower right-hand side of the map near Artarmon rail station is in fact, State Rail Reserve owned land and not accessible by legislation, by anyone other than an authorised State Rail employee.
In addition, some of the other Green Open Space shown on the map does not exist. It appears to me that someone knocked over a pot of green paint onto the map and forgot to clean it off! Possibly, the report was executed using another desktop audit with Google Maps as the Demolition Report is stated to be a desktop appraisal only.
On page 13 in the Section titled Planning Controls there is a drawing titled R4. On that drawing there are two green coloured areas marked RE1.
RE1 is then defined as Public Recreation. Both of those green areas are closed off dead end streets but still with road access to some of the adjoining properties. One has a single seat on some grass but they are not a place a child could kick a ball around. Also, the closed off street (Moriarty Street) is clearly shown on the drawing on page 16 as a road, not a recreational area. (Note: The same error is repeated on page 46).
The other RE1 space is a normal dead-end street with full roadside car parking.
There is, however, a park another block further to the North. This once contained a large two-storey Federation mansion that was left to the Chatswood Historical Society but somehow ended up in the hands of the Council. It was later demolished and turned into a park. I want to alert the approving authorities that this park should not be considered as an available recreation area to offset the size of the proposed Bowen development as the park most likely would have been used to justify all the adjacent existing medium-rise development around the place. The available recreational space density could already be exceeded.
Page 30 which discusses shadow diagrams states the shadow producing bulk has “Generally” been designed to comply. It can’t generally comply. It either does or doesn’t comply.
Throughout the text and other documents, Bowen Street is shown as being open to Moriarty Street and in other places it is shown to be closed. All the documents should be properly proof read and these errors fixed as, as I understand it, the two roads will only have pedestrian access between them.
Similarly, the texts discuss communal space inside the development and a dictionary search indicates such space deemed a public space. Yet on some drawings the communal space is fenced off and in others there is no fence. This should be clarified and fixed.
On page 39 where it references Design Excellence there is a statement about achieving the principles of ecologically sustainable development. However, there needs to be a paragraph about the reuse of existing materials to offset the carbon emissions of the new work. All the houses to be demolished appear to be double brick and will contain Australian hardwood floors and roofs. These materials should be recycled into the proposed development.

PHOTOMONTAGE (1) OF PROPOSED BUILDING VIEWED FROM BOWEN STREET
The photomontage shows two Porsche, one Lamborghini and what appears to be a Jaguar car. However, it does not show the electric power lines; the parking restriction signs; and, the gates between the two buildings shown in other places in the document submissions. A prospective purchaser should see the proposed work as it will be.
In addition, the trees shown in the photomontage are not in accord with the ‘tree protection zone’ shown in the Arboricultural Impact Assessment report.

PHOTOMONTAGE (2) OF PROPOSED BUILDING VIEWED FROM MORIARTY ROAD.
The artist has the perspective and size exaggerated. As drawn, right in front of the proposed building are trees with large canopies over-powering and double the height of the proposed five-storey building. Only the Giant Sequoias of the USA and Giant Redwood trees of Canada would grow that tall but none of these are native to Australia! Such reporting errors could mislead the reader. The existing trees possibly only reach the balcony of level 2 of the proposed building. The photomontage needs to be fixed to represent reality.
Furthermore, note in other parts of the collection of reports it states the height of the proposed building is sympathetic to the Moriarty Road Heritage Listed house immediately adjacent to the proposed building. That statement is not very obvious when looking at Photomontage (2). The Heritage House is only as high as the first balcony level of the proposed five-storey building.

GEOTECHNICAL REPORT
I am surprised that throughout the report the author stated in several places that they had not visited the site but have only undertaken a desktop audit. I wonder if this approach explains the errors in the other reports.

OTHER
Finally, (1) if I may give an opinion on the architectural design; the curved outer structure is outdated. The building will look old as soon as it is completed. I think it would be worthwhile considering a more modern appearance. (2) The designers should consider making the underground parking spaces at 45 degrees rather than having the spaces perpendicular to walls. 45-degree spaces are so much easier to park a car in a confined space.

Further to the accuracy of the reports, I believe there are a number of trees on the subject sites which have not been reported in the arboricultural assessments. What determines whether trees are included in the report- is it to a certain size?
I would encourage a proposal to relocate some of established trees, instead of destroying and replacing altogether, considering the importance for sustainability and minimising environmental impact.

I really do appreciate the input from Adrian and another local who provided such invaluable material pertaining to this application. Obviously, there is much that the general public are not privy to unless following this site application from the beginning. There is nothing worse than feeling like property developers are running this city. We are seeing similar issues with Kuringai council where numerous development projects are getting the go ahead. I am thinking someone should do a family tree project and find out how many developers have indirect ties to council. There is nothing worse than driving down a residential street and having to see row after row of high rise apartment buildings. They are an eyesore and to make matters worse developers have needed to remove numerous trees. There are many examples of cities around the world that have used every inch of space to erect high rise apartment blocks, we don't need to replicate this model here.

There's a shortage of residential units in this area.