.
Welcome to Eastern Suburbs Connect! I created the group to connect with the community and share local businesses on facebook in 2018. We have over 2,000 people in the group and are growing daily. If you are a local, please join us here.
Right now we want to invite the Councils in the area to work with us, with consideration, consultation & future minded decisions. Woollahra and Waverley Councils share the peninsular and we as residents, rate payers and business owners want to work with councils to ensure all decisions made are inline with our lifestyle now and in the future. I wrote a post for more information here.
If you would like to send council a letter to Object to the Wilberforce Car Park Development as it has been presented please click the link below to download and edit the red text with your information and email to: records@woollahra.nsw.gov.au subject: ‘DA 598/2022/1: Mr Aleidzans Wilberforce Ave Car Park Development Objection’:
Want to send a letter to council? download letter: WORD DOC or PDF DOC
mailto:records@woollahra.nsw.gov.au
.
These are the letters sent in February 2023.
.
Here’s the story so far:
“David & Goliath story in every sense! Community Rallying to Fight For Rose Bay Shopping Village During Wilberforce Car Park Development.“
PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION TO PAUSE THE DEVELOPMENT & INVESTIGATE!
I love where I live. Not just for the ocean and space but for the people who make up our community.
Rose Bay Village is quirky and unique, some businesses have been there for a long time, others for a short time but feel like they have always been there and a large majority of business owners live locally.
It is literally at the edge of the land with the beach at the back of the village on Sydney Harbour. A special place.
Like the rest of Sydney, parking is a real problem now. People who catch the ferry to work parking all day, hundreds of construction workers, working on the overdevelopment in the area, parking all day and simply not enough parking spots in the first place. The infrastructure is simply not there and not being developed. Yet houses are being knocked down for large developments up and down Old South Head and New South Head Roads and all roads in between.
Council’s solution is a glass mountain that will dwarf the area around it and does not reflect the area. It also doesn’t reflect the needs of the area, you can see our first glimpse here:
1. Shopping Village needs parking
2. Area needs better infrastructure to manage the traffic and load of development
3. We need a community space
They lodged the DA 22 December 2022 when the project was discussed late 2021 and early 2022. I have since learned that this is normal council behaviour?! What??? How is this transparent?!? How is this being a useful tool for the community?! You can view the DA here, enter 598/2022.
There is a letter dated 23 January 2023 that says the window for inspection and objection of the DA is 23 January – 24 February 2023. This is not enough time and this is the worst time of the year. Is this behaviour that in years gone by would have been called trickery?!
Their drawings have put the parking and the 2 level community space in one place?!
A community space shouldn’t be in the middle of a busy bustling shopping village.
We don’t need more retail space in the village, there is plenty and always something empty. These 2 marked retail spaces are lip service only – they aren’t useable spaces.
We need some community space that is adaptable and multipurpose:
- Market space
- All weather space
- Kids
- Elders’ activities
- Music
- Learning
- Experiential, Science centre?
The DA proposes the build will take 2-3 years (which is likely to be longer) and budget blow out.
The cost is $28,826,432.00 for what will end up being an extra 112 car spots; unneeded useless retail space and a small community space in the corner, almost as an after thought?!
That is $257,378 per spot and is certainly not viable?! Surely?!!
Alarm bells were ringing when I read “Council will continue to explore funding options for the project” in the council letter dated 23 January 2023.
In life responsible fiscal actions are not spending what you don’t have. This is certainly true for council who are spending rate payers money!
The village will be a mess and disaster and the structure is not what is needed! As you can imagine after 3 hellish Covid years, business owners and shoppers won’t survive even more disruption to access to the village.
A friend who is a business owner in the village reached out to me to help write a letter to council and we are now managing a group we are calling the Rose Bay Alliance. We are requesting more time to meet with council and discuss all the details of this project. Our priority is for as little disruption to business as possible.
The DA is for the space marked A below. We have asked for the project to be stopped and the space opposite, marked B below be developed as the car park development. A multi storey car park can be developed on that site with a lot less disruption to the village and local lifestyle.
In my investigation of this development I was told that in 2018 council said they would be installing 100 parallel parking spots in the village to alleviate the pressure on the parking. WHY HAVEN’T THEY DONE THAT ALREADY???
Another mind boggling discovery in this investigation is the ‘Parklet’ in Collins St which is right behind the houses on the beach. We don’t need a park to sit on in the street when the beach and park is less than 30 m away?! We need PARKing. In this exact space, business owners and customers are getting fines of hundreds of dollars to unload stock and pick up orders quickly.
What is needed there is 15 min ENFORCED parking. You can achieve this using tech other councils, like Newcastle NSW, are using. This is what will help the village thrive. Not a ‘parklet’ that only satisfies the demands of waterfront residents (who also seem to park there for hours without getting a fine).
So I would like to share with you my letter of objection, that was emailed to records@woollahra.nsw.gov.au 16 Feb 2023, (if you would like to send a lett