This week we received over 80 submissions to the public exhibition and while I can say that I agreed with what residents have been saying about the priorities and potential delivery path of the Lindfield Village Hub project as a whole, I’d also say that none of the submissions talked about the Planning Proposal itself (which is about land rezoning) and the submissions may therefore end up not addressing any of the land zoning issues that are opened up by the planning proposal. To explain, think of the Lindfield Village Hub project as two workstreams.
Workstream one covers the financial and project delivery elements including questions such as:
- Who will council partner with to design and construct the hub?
- Council does not own land for a pedestrian bridge. Does any potential partner help deliver one at an acceptable cost?
- Is Council able to afford building the hub?
- Should the hub include commuter parking and if so, is the State Government committed to fund it at a reasonable cost?
- Which elements of the hub should council retain vs. which elements should be privately owned?
- Should funds from the old Lindfield Library go towards funding the new library?
- How should we fund the future operations and maintenance of the hub?
The issues with workstream one are being addressed behind the scenes as part of a separate process.
Workstream two is unrelated to, but separate from, the first work stream. It covers the land use and zoning of council-owned land with questions such as:
- Should the heights be increased from seven storeys to nine storeys?
- Should we add an additional residential tower to the site, thus reducing the 3,000 sqm green space previously promised to residents?
- Do we wish to build the library and community facilities at the current anticipated size of ~1,200 sqm each?
The Planning Proposal is in relation to workstream two and I’ve covered it in more detail in the previous post.
The 80+ emails cover workstream one and not the Planning Proposal so how could they make things worse? Council staff could say “we received over 80 responses to the planning proposal and not one objected to the reduction in park size”.
If you want to make a submission please make sure that it’s about the Planning Proposal, not unrelated matters.
