PlanningAlerts

3 Comments

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1. So..
   - 3 Story building
   - 15 Apartments
   - You'd have to assume that visitors would be coming and going.
   - Two food and drink Premises
   - You'd have to assume customers would be coming and going.
   - A Medical Centre
   - Again lets assume quite a few patients parking there.

   And a reduction in the car parking requirement?!

   I understand that Darebin Council has pretty much already ruined large parts of the council area with cramming too many shoebox apartments into a tiny lot with no parking - thereby forcing people to park on the streets. But surely there's a point where developers are just trying it on just to see what they can get away with right?

   Surely this can't be approved?!

2. The obvious solution to parking concerns is to require a permit to park on the street, and to not issue permits to new buildings. This is win-win — existing residents see no degradation of the street parking situation, and new residents aren’t forced to pay for parking they might not need or want.

   But for some reason people seem to object to this solution.

   I live 400m from this site and I’m excited about this development. We need more cafe/restaurant/bars in the area. We could also do with another medical centre. And of course there’s a massive housing shortage, so it’ll be good to have more places for people to live.

3. To the previous commenters attacking council for approving too many apartments: this application was lodged two days ago and it seems you’re already making sweeping statements based on just the permit description?

   The term ‘reduction to the car parking requirement’ could mean a range of things, from a reduction of just one or two visitor spaces to a total waiver of all car parking. The proponents may even include alternative transport options such as car share facilities. Without viewing the application and understanding that detail, it’s not possible to make a valuable comment on specific matters, and deriding the concept of car parking reductions in general is not helpful. If you actually have viewed the application and your comment is based on a close understanding, then power to you and I apologise.

   Also, this application could be amended several times based on negotiations before council moves it to advertising. So jumping on their back at this stage seems pretty counter intuitive to me. Though I guess that is the central challenge of this website that encourages comment based on preliminary words alone.

   Here in Reservoir we are crying out for high quality medium density developments that include commercial and community uses at the lower levels. Existing examples of apartment developments from the 2010s have been fairly uninspiring with their overuse of cheap materials like render and - worse - alucobond, so an amendment application to a 2017 approval like this is an opportunity to improve on previous endorsed plans and encourage finer grain/more appealing urban design. We should no longer accept whatever the proponent is bothered to present and should push for design excellence. Whether that can be achieved through this process depends on the amendments sought, but I consider we should raise our expectations across the board and employ existing policies to aim a little higher.

   I encourage council to facilitate the approval of new community, retail and hospitality uses in our neighbourhood centres, and to push developers to use tactile and high quality materials in their proposals. Broadway, Edwardes and Gilbert really don’t need another stained rendered sheer wall (though I not Gilbert has seen some higher quality residential examples in recent times).

   I imagine it’s hard work dealing with proponents who are focussed on profit on one hand, and, on the other, passionate community members who care but who may generally lack a detailed understanding (myself included).

   Thanks :)

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