My family and I strongly object to the proposed development. The site sits right on the border of West Ryde and Meadowbank. Despite the artificial street address identifying it as being part of West Ryde, it is in substance part of Meadowbank as its residents are most likely to use the public amenities in Meadowbank due to much closer proximity.
Meadowbank is already a very high density residential area where parking and traffic have become a tremendous problem in recent years due to additional thousands of new units having been built and are still being built.
The tall and mature trees (particularly those along Charity Creek) are precious to the local area due to their air purifying ability. They also make the streetscape much more pleasant. Therefore, they should stay, not to be touched. Besides, there is a big substation next to the site. This makes it even more necessary to keep all the mature trees untouched.
As a general observation, in recent years planning authorities including Ryde Council does not appear to have given the keeping of mature and beautiful trees much thought at all when it comes to its approval of new developments Meadowbank and its immediate surrounds. One case in point is the Crowle Estate development (at the formerly Crowle Home and German School sites) at 72-78 Belmore Street, Ryde (which borders Meadowbank). When the site was sold to the developer, there were a row of mature and very beautiful trees on Belmore Street and Junction Street which, had they been kept, would have made the development and the local streetscape much more attractive. With their removal, the development which contains hundreds of characterless units looks sterile and uninteresting. In their place, the developer has put it a few sorry looking short and insubstantial trees likely to reach around 3 metres in maturity.
So please keep our precious trees because they belong to the local community. We all know that trees take many many years to grow and mature but can be cut down using powerful chainsaw within minutes.
Going forward, I earnestly hope that the planning authorities in Ryde will give the trees priority and much more thought, and only consider to have them removed if it is absolutely necessary to allow a reasonable proposed development (which are sympathetic to the locality and surrounds) to go ahead.
Thank you.
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