Draft Activity Centres -Report on 30th May Planning Committee Meeting

The Coalition of Boroondara Community and Resident Groups presented the Urban Planning Special Committee (UPSC) an alternative plan in an endeavour to reach a sensible compromise to the Councils draft. To the credit of the Coumcils Strategic Planners they did look at our alternatives  and produced some amendments to their original draft. The amendments were published on the Councils website a week prior to the 30th May meeting. However, in our opinion the amendments do not go far enough.

 The Coalition of Community & Resident Groups'  recommendations  :

• introduce Residential 3 zone for all residential areas as protection against opportunistic infill development.
• All identified "Local Centres" be removed from the Strategy.
• Remove Maling Road, Canterbury Village & Auburn Village.
• Level 3 to be in scale with the predominant surrounding area.
• Level 2  to have separate structure plans and to retain role as village centres.
• All Centres to be identified as "Urban Villages" (as A.C.s sends the wrong message).
• Interim height controls to be made mandatory.
• No development on car parks.
• Enterprise corridors to be treated as listed in our submission(complex).
• Heritage protection to be stepped up especially in shopping areas.

The council officers' amendments included the Res. 3 recommendation.The Local Centres were transferred to Council's  "My Neighbourhood Strategy" (not sure what this means). Maling Road, Canterbury Village & Auburn Village  remain in the draft Strategy. Mandatory controls to be persued with the Minister for Planning. The car parks remain identified for development. Otherwise the draft had some cosmetic further changes which make no real concessions.

At the May 30th meeting, which was well attended, most remained critical of the councils Activity Centres Strategy (ACS) although some accepted the amendments and indicated support for the ACS, mainly from the Surrey Hills area where separate negotiations with council gained some further concessions.

The Urban Planning Special Committee will meet on Monday 6th June to decide on whether to give the draft plan the go-ahead or abort it altogether.The meeting starts at 6.45 pm in the Council Chambers.