61 Fennell Street North Parramatta NSW 2151

I write as a concerned non-resident with an interest in community heritage to add my voice to the residents’ objections against the Development Application for a commercial boarding house for twenty people to be built on 61 Fennell Street on the corner of Fennell Street and Brickfield Street.
I feel I owe this to my former colleague and friend, the late historian Henry Min-His Chan at Newcastle University, who devoted his academic life to documenting and protecting the contribution of Chinese migrants to Australian society. All Saints Cemetery is an important burial site for early Chinese migrants as well as migrants from many other local communities. Judith Dunn’s 2007 book ‘The Parramatta Cemeteries: All Saints and Wesleyan’ shows All Saints Cemetery is a community asset and part of Parramatta’s historical identity.
My concern is that the visual integrity of All Saints Cemetery and its surrounds be kept intact out of respect for community history and past generations. Parramatta Council has determined that All Saints Cemetery has historical, aesthetic, social significance and high archaeological potential. 61 Fennel Street occupies a prominent corner position in the low scale residential character zone which surrounds the cemetery. So far there is no gap in the Special Character Area and no new development has occurred since 2011 when the Council’s Special Character Area policy came into effect.
A building of the bulk that is proposed in the Development Application would considerably impact the All Saints’ Cemetery Special Character Area which is protected under the 2011 Parramatta DCP Statement of Significance. Allowing an exemption from this policy would create a precedent that over time could lead to the loss of the residential character and garden space of the precinct surrounding All Saints Cemetery.