Pittwater Online News

Your readers should know that the NSW Planning & Environment has just granted permission (on 27th March ) to a developer to build 95 units 4 storeys high ($180 million) on OPEN SPACE,  environmentally  sensitive lands and  in the middle of  Pittwater’s largest wildlife & coastal corridor at Bayview.

159 remnant trees will go!! 

This information will not be made public.  Why are NSW planning laws not transparent to the public, only developers? 

On March 29th 2017 a NSW Department of Planning and Environment Planning Services Delegate issued a Site Compatibility Certificate (SCC)for a development within Bayview Golf Course. The application and an accompanying report, first received by the Department on May 3rd 2016, under Clause 25(4)(a) of the State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing for Seniors of People with a Disability) seeks to establish the construction and occupation of seven (7) separate buildings of predominantly 3-4 storeys in height for the purposes of 95 in-fill self-care dwellings with ancillary services and facilities. 

Basement level car parking accommodating 218 vehicles is part of the proposal. 

This is a revised SCC Application, the first was initially refused by the Department in January 2015 and modifications were made, including reducing the maximum building height from 4-5 storeys to 3-4, a revised approach to flood management, and, as the proposed seniors housing now forms part of the overall Bayview Master Plan, the revised SCC application states it is now designed to increase ecological values over the entire site through increased planting and reduced tree removal. 

The project is the result of an overall strategy for the revitalisation and rehabilitation of the existing Bayview Golf Club facilities to ensure the long term sustainability and ongoing viability of the golf club and its course. 

In September 2013, the Club released an Expression of Interest for a development opportunity at the Site with the following key outcomes identified for the project:

• Achieve a realistic financial return to the Club on a timely basis;

• Retention of an 18-hole golf course;

• Ability to minimise disruption to members;

• Higher quality development in keeping with the area;

• Development which is sympathetic to the surrounding neighbours and community; and

• Ability to activate the project in shortest reasonable time.

In March 2014 the Bayview Golf Club Members voted to sell a 20, 200 sq. m parcel of land to generate $10 million for the club.

A Site Compatibility Certificate is required under the provisions of clause 25 of the State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing for Seniors of People with a Disability) 2004 and clause 50(2A) of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2000. A Site Compatibility Certificate is required to accompany any development application when the land is zoned primarily for urban purposes, or land that adjoins land zoned primarily for urban purposes, but only if the land is being used for the purposes of an existing registered club.

The final layout, scale and bulk, number of in-fill self-care units and onsite facilities for the proposed seniors housing development will still be subject to the resolution of issues including car parking, access, potential ecological impacts, flood risk management and evacuation design responses. 

This will need to be determined through the assessment of the development application under section 79C of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.

The Department of Planning issuing the Site Compatibility Certificate (SCC) to Waterbrook Lifestyle Resorts, allows them to now enter the next stage of the development process, including the lodgement of a Development Application with the Northern Beaches Council.

An amended course master plan will be submitted to council as part of the DA process.

Bayview Golf Club and its members have expressed delight this week at the SCC being granted. Under the agreement with Waterbrook, the developers will fund extensive environmental and remedial works across the course which will mean the course will be upgraded to meet the members' playing expectations and will ‘increase its biodiversity and ecological sustainability’.

Other members of our community are not so thrilled. Residents who reside around the course, and are not members, are dismayed at the issuing of the SCC, stating wildlife will be displaced and the destruction of 159 more trees is an outrage that will accelerate the degradation of the site.

The Bayview Life website has modified its landing page this week, asking people to attend the Rally at Mona Vale Park today, Sunday April 9th at 11 a.m.. 

Organised by the community group, Friends of Mona Vale, the group states the B-Line development is the first step to overdevelop Mona Vale, citing such documents as the Village Park Mona Vale Plan of Management prepared by Pittwater Council in March 2008 (Page 26: ‘Relocation of bus stop to proposed major bus interchange facility on Barrenjoey Road at Village Park. Major capital works project subject to liaison with state Transit Authority (STA), Roads Traffic Authority (RTA) and Pittwater Council’ and Page 37: ‘Barrenjoey Road Frontage – Relocation of bus interchange site – Removal of existing mounds and unsuitable tree planting – landscape works’), the destruction of Beeby Park and the unpopular Mona Vale Place Plan.

In related news, a Delegate of the Sydney Region East at the Department of Planning and Environment as Delegate of the Greater Sydney Commission passed, with conditions, the development of a property at 15 Jubilee Avenue Warriewood on Thursday April 6th, 2017. This planning proposal sought to amend Pittwater Local Environmental Plan 2014, as it applies to the site at 15 Jubilee Avenue, Warriewood to rezone the site from IN2 Light Industrial to B7 Business Park. The proposal states it will provide approximately 112 jobs.