Latest Newsletter: June 1st, 2020
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OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
Greetings to all subscribers
This is a kind of Special Edition Newsletter in an effort to focus subscribers on the urgency of Kensington Association’s bread and butter role – the monitoring and scrutiny of development proposals for our built and natural environment.
This is a call to anyone reading this to ‘gird your loins’ …. maybe not loins – your ‘awareness’, your ‘sense of community’ …… and lend your support to the tasks at hand.
I am a relative newbie to this kind of stuff, but in my opinion our region – Kensington (South and East in particular) together with North Melbourne (South and West), plus other areas down nearer the Maribyrnong river – is on the cusp of a developmental tsunami, and we at the Association need your support.
Perhaps I should add that this Newsletter can be read in conjunction with an article I have recently written for the Kensington Association in the Winter Flem/Ken News (out any time now)… it’s called ‘Urban Renewal’.
So what is the task at hand?
- At this point it is a call out to anyone with any planning expertise. If they have any experience or knowledge of the machinations that take place prior to development submissions, that would be excellent. To have someone who can look at an application and pick out the BS, and knows the lingo required to make salient points in an objection.
- The process is that we (as KA) are notified by the City of Melbourne about development applications – often at very short notice – which we then scrutinise and pick out those aspects of the proposal that are positive or negative in relation to how they contribute to the liveability of the area concerned. So this is a call out to anyone who can take an hour or so (or less) to follow up on our scrutiny. The scenario might be that we send you the out some salient points that we have picked out for you to fashion your own objection. Yes … it is invariably an objection. It is not that we disregard or never comment on positives, but we focus on the things that are not right. We don’t expect every resident or every second resident to have time or confidence to do the initial scrutiny, so we help you.
[Contact Simon Harvey – KAIncChair@gmail.com]
So what are the issues and what’s happening now?
We have just made strong representations in relation to 2 development sites – 14-26 Bruce Street where there was a proposal for an 8 storey office building, and secondly a proposal on the corner of Stubbs St and Macaulay Rd (the Vision Australia site) for an 8 storey 426 apartment complex. The latter of these proposals in not yet ratified primarily because of the failure to properly advertise the proposal.
So what are the main issues that we look at. (1) We look at height, bulk, setback, and design: (2) We look to maximise public open space (and other liveability and access issues) (3) Since much of the area I have highlighted is nominated as ‘Mixed Zone’ (residential and commercial), we look to see what’s in that ‘mix’ in relation to community infrastructure and density of residential building (ie. will it cause overcrowding; what are the effects on congestion?)
One of the first ‘battlegrounds’ (sorry for the military reference – but that’s what it feels like) is the block bounded by Macaulay Rd, Stubbs St, Robertson St, and the laneway east of Barnett St. This is because it is composed of 4 large landholdings which will be developed in the not too distant future, for which there will be precious little opportunity for community input into what happens in terms of design, population, community infrastructure, and open space!
In summary:
Calling all planning expertise: calling all residents to support our scrutiny and lodge objections.
Kensington Association Meetings – during COVID-19 restrictions
We will have our next formal meeting via Zoom on Monday June 1st.
Below is the Zoom link for anyone who wishes to attend. If you are a member you will have voting rights of course. We welcome you and invite you to join our band of crusaders if you are not already a member. Access to the agenda of the meeting will shortly be available on the Kensington Association website.
Simon Harvey is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: June Meeting KA
Time: Jun 1, 2020 19:30 Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86984671512?pwd=WVVYWDRaV3k0ZW1PeXRJMW5KMXllUT09
Meeting ID: 869 8467 1512
Password: 853141
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