4 minute read
Lane Cove sends a ‘please explain’ on SLS
Please explain!
The redevelopment of St Leonards South (SLS) was yet again addressed during a public forum at a Lane Cove Council meeting last month, with 20 local residents contributing to the debate. Also on the table was discussion around the Council’s Local Strategic Planning Statement.
Following the Indepenent Planning Commission (IPC) advice against Council’s SLS plan mid-year, the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment would be expecting Council to review its proposal for the site. Council is instead asking the Department to handle the response to IPC, starting with a workshop for councillors, staff and community, to discuss outcomes of IPC advice; for the Department itself to deliver its own findings; to give Council an outline of the Department’s vision of a revised planning framework and infrastructure plan for SLS; and for it to recommend a process for Council’s review of its plan. While happy to participate in the process, Council found IPC’s advice on SLS so general as to be unclear and is asking the Department to ‘please explain’ – that is, to interpret the IPC’s advice and to guide Council on its role in reviewing SLS. “The IPC came to its conclusions but wasn’t specific about what would be the right height, scale or enough open space. Unfortunately their advice was not in metrics that we can follow,” said Craig Wrightson, Council’s General Manager. “We’re asking the Department to handle the response and tell us definitively what is required.” Council believes its SLS plan complies with the Department’s relevant principles, exceeds total open space requirements, and that the scale fits comfortably within the larger St Leonards and Crows Nest Draft 2036 Plan. “It’s unusual and confusing that the Department endorsed the plan for exhibition and then inserted it into Department’s St Leonards and Crows Nest Draft 2036 Plan but then referred it to the IPC which has advised against it.” Mr Wrightson said. The IPC’s advice was that the SLS plan did not fit the design principles of the wider St Leonards Crows Nest 2036 Draft Plan; that due to its scale SLS would be ‘overdevelopment’ and the area did not require rezoning to meet Greater Sydney Commission housing targets. However IPC advice on housing targets and therefore rezoning is based on five-year 2016-2021 housing targets – somewhat shorter than 10-year goals in Council’s sights.
COUNCIL IS ALSO ASKING THE DEPARTMENT TO CONSIDER: ● reducing Lane Cove LGA’s growth target of 41% to 52,000 people by 2036 to align with neighbouring councils such as Mosman 6%, Hunters Hill 9%, rather than its bigger neighbours – North Sydney 27%, Willoughby 21%, and Ryde 45%. ● the Department itself contributing funds through NSW’s regional open space fund to pay for more open space in SLS, given that Council’s plan’s proposed contributions through increased developers’ levies per unit for SLS have already come to $30m above previous levy caps. ● to look carefully at aspects of the plan – which Council believes are strongly in the plan’s favour – including: overshadowing,
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