I’m astonished that this development is not going ahead. It’s been in planning for a very long time, but they only actually demolished the former Woolies on the planned site earlier this year.
The area’s State MP had these thoughts on Facebook. Included is a suggestion that the State Government should buy the land and use it to build public housing and a park. He also says:
This whole development has seemed dodgy from the moment Council approved it - they gave the developer major concessions (like removing any requirement for the initially suggested “urban common” greenspace) and we later discovered the developer’s company had donated to the LNP using a loophole in state donation laws.
I think its cancellation is kinda a shame. Yes, if the state government does take Michael Berman’s requests on board then that will be an even better outcome. But this was going to be a large amount of housing delivered to an area that really needs it, and in a way that would have felt pretty integrated into the streetscape.
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