Re … NO HIGH RISE CONDOs at Long Pocket
Phone 07 3371 9355 or Email
13 February 2005
1. We must run a multi-level but coordinated campaign featuring the "NIMBY" responses that are inevitable from a development of this type.
Will there be 12 or 13000 concrete trucks going past? How many builders, workers and supply trucks and vehicles will travel along Meiers Road each day? Will the "new" road be built prior to the construction or will Council deem the existing road "safe"? How will this road survive so much heavy industrial traffic? Where will workers park? How will this traffic access the sites eg via Lambert and Harts Road or Indooroopilly Road?
2. We must be very careful with the responses not to create opportunities we don't want. Traffic is one issue dealt with in more detail below.
But I overheard one person explaining in great detail the benefits of a bikeway to UQ from Long Pocket … but why spend probably $3-4m for a bikeway along there? Who will use it? Will these condos really be student dwellings or staff for UQ? Is the bikeway a threat to the wonderful riverside bushland along the "Tarcoola Track"? Is it just a token gesture to be used to infer support for the 300 CONDOs?
3. We must also be careful to recognise that this is only the second stage of a continuing process whereby the golf course gets approval to sell off "spare" land for development. How many more times will it occur? How many more condos and houses in the future?
Some of you will have been part of the attempt to stop the first successful bid by the IGC which resulted in the IGC selling off its surplus land, and some will be living on that very land. The problem here is the "precedent" that has seen BCC resume land for park, sport and recreation (resumed at farm prices from farmers). The land was then "given" to IGC at a very low price. Then IGC was permitted by the Council and the legal processes (involving some very interesting "names") to sell off the surplus land at maximum profit … to fund a private golf club and its rather wealthy members. Should a private and exclusive golf club be supported this way? Should public parklands be taken from the general community and sold for profit by a small exclusive club membership?
4. It is now emerging that this is one of several similar cases where farms and similar areas have been forcibly resumed by BCC for open space uses including park, sport and recreation but are now being given to private development interests for very profitable housing developments.
The issue here is the increasing population (including locally with the small lot housing, flats and units and now the 300 CONDOs) just when open space is being reduced. This is despite the need for more open space given the increased population the government seems so keen to encourage and then try to accommodate while maintaining SEQ and Brisbane as we like it.
The Minnippi Wetlands on the eastern side of Brisbane are very similar. Following resumption, Council is now "selling" the entire site for development as a golf course and some 170 or more housing sites/units … with virtually no parklands.
The parklands issue is a fundamental as many urban and regional planning texts indicate the necessity to have a minimum area of open space available per capita. This figure should increase with increasing density as "backyard" space reduces. But it must also be local so it is easy for young folk to access for play without adult supervision being necessary. It must also be close for "oldies" to access. Increasingly, Brisbane's local "open space" is being sold off … replaced with parklands miles away… The 300 HIGH RISE CONDOs at Long Pocket is just the latest example. The big question is, will it end and if so when? Why not stop it by stopping the 300 CONDOs ?
5. Identifying and addressing the major local concerns ... It appears to be traffic but is it really?
Briefly the open space issue relates to the fact that there are now (effectively) no prohibitions in town plans so in principle anyone can propose anything anywhere.
In practice this means that only those proposals that have a reasonable chance are likely to be proposed ... and once that happens, the problems start esp for the local authority ie BCC in this case. BCC could have refused the proposal but since it appears not to have done this, then we can assume Council planners are working with Mirvac to "negotiate" the project. Why are "we", the "local community" excluded from these negotiations which imply that BCC and Mirvac will agree an acceptable development?
Secondly, if open space is to be used for development, what precedent does the Mirvac-IGC proposal set for SEQ and the Office of Urban Management (OUM) SEQ plan if this proposal is not rejected by Council? And why has Council not rejected or at least publicly criticised it already?
We now understand that not only is Mirvac interested in the IGC project, it also is interested in the Tennyson tennis centre.
We also understand that the DPI lands at Tennyson are available for sale or soon will be, as are the CSIRO and DPI lands at Long Pocket.
If you look at the scale of projects Mirvac develops, this whole precinct complete with a road bridge across the river would be ideal ...!
Which leads to the problem created by the traffic concerns. If too much emphasis is placed on the traffic AFTER the development is completed, rather than on other reasons for not proceeding with the proposal, then concerns about the traffic will provide the justification for a road bridge. As with many others (some successfully fought off), bridges with major roads were long ago proposed to connect from UQ to Rocklea and to Indooroopilly via the Sandy Creek parklands and St Lucia Golf Course (cf RQGC at Hamilton and the Gateway Bridge and Gateway Arterial).
The bridge would be justified as reducing traffic congestion around Indooroopilly Toll Bridge and improving access to UQ ... in much the same way that Council has argued that the "(un)Green Bridge" to UQ will be a benefit to traffic eg along Coro Drive. In fact this would add an enormous increase in traffic along the access roads to and from Long Pocket, far more than would be created by the 300 CONDOs.
To get this into perspective, use the following link to get to a useful map which shows the DPI land at Yeronga, proximity to trains (the public transport excuse) and Ipswich and Annerley Roads
http://www.whereis.com.au/whereis/mapping/maplink.do?maplinkId=120448&brandId=1
Accordingly, while keeping it as an issue, we need to focus on far more important and more reliable issues than traffic ...! The demise of "town planning" as we know and expect and the loss of open space are two of them!
In summary, there is a need for the various interests and concerns to work together to avoid being "divided and conquered" eg need to avoid "bait" such as the new bike ways, proposed 'new' wetlands, and token statements about preserving trees etc. Facing up to it, this is a huge development with potentially, many more stages to follow. In practical terms, this project follows an extraordinary case regarding the former QLTA tennis centre at Milton. Here despite being a park and in a floodprone area, the legal system found it need not remain a park because amongst other issues, the "town plan" did not specifically identify it as a park. If the 300 HIGH RISE CONDOs at Long Pocket is approved by Council, indeed, not refused, then this project is likely to signal that the OUM open space cannot be protected and thus the end of "certainty" from town planning as we know.
Any comments to me are welcome.
Michael Yeates
for WTN RAG