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Maroubra Beach Sydney : Oasis in
the East?
Is
this the future of Maroubra Bay Hotel? - Real or PR
Spin?
This
is the website some people may wish you didn't see!
There
are some "interesting" developments happening
in the beautiful Sydney suburb of Maroubra Beach.
Read
about some of news here!
To:
Randwick City Council Planning Department,
Attn: Sima Truuvert, Acting Director;
Kerry Kyriacou, Manager;
Larissa Ozog, Planner
cc: General Manager
Re: Discovery Request regarding Maroubra Bay Hotel
DA expert report & related matters
Council on Tuesday night approved the most outrageous
redevelopment of half of a pair of semis in its history,
and possibly in the history of Australia. I will make
certain that you are given the appropriate accolades
for this achievement and see if the Planning Institute,
Royal Australian Institute of Architects or Housing
Industry Association has any national awards which
might recognise such achievement. You also made lots
of errors in law, including misquoting your own planning
instruments, failing to meet the assurances you gave
the public about independent assessment, and failing
on your own notice periods, but I will provide fuller
details of each of these within days.
However, the most affected neighbour Effie Manakouris
of 176 Marine Parade, as well as the precinct, need
to get legal advice on taking the matter forward.
Could you under
(a) legal discovery given a Land & Environment
Court appeal is being drafted;
(b) as a valid request by an RCC precinct; and
(c) as a reasonable request from a ratepayer;
please provide as a matter of urgency a copy of all
memos, notes, emails, letters, faxes, board/committee
papers or other documents in whatever format (whether
stored on electronic medium or any physical medium),
which deal with any of the following:
(i) any form of communications to/from Councillors
regarding the DA from 12 weeks prior to its lodgement
until its alleged determination on Tuesday night;
(ii) any copy of the related media coverage (eg had
anyone in the Planning Dept received a copy of or
commented upon the articles that appeared in the Southern
Courier regarding this DA site);
(iii) any receipt or other documentation relating
to the submission of petitions via Cr Andrews at the
public meeting held on 15 March 2002 at Maroubra Beach
in the period 15/3/03 through 27/3/03;
(iv) any issue pertaining to the selection of people
proposed to be asked or actually asked to serve on
the interim or permanent independent review panel
(for which it is appropriate to 'black out' any figures
relating to professional hourly fees for such work
or personal information such as DOB, a home address
or home telephone number);
(v) any issue relating to the issues to be addressed
by such interim or permanent independent review panel,
or PlanningNSW or otherwise providing a 'brief' or
limiting such 'brief' for either group;
(vi) any issue confirming whether the basis of the
community opposition was provided to the interim or
permanent review panel and PlanningNSW prior to their
reviews being performed;
(vii) any feedback from any of the persons proposed
to be or actually on the interim or permanent independent
review panel;
(viii) any of the items in (iv) through (vi) relating
to Mr Collier;
(ix) any feedback, correspondence or dialogue with
PlanningNSW regarding the subject DA;
(x) any feedback, correspondence or dialogue with
the Heritage Council of NSW regarding the subject
DA;
(xi) any information indicating the circulation of
any independent review or PlanningNSW material, including
how certain councillors came to have an early opinion
on how the review has progressed and whether the proponent
was provided a copy and whether any attempt was made
to provide a copy to the precinct;
(xii) any draft or final copy of any internal report
on the DA, including the original versions as first
prepared by Larissa Ozog as the planner assigned to
assess the DA prior to changes implemented by her
superiors;
(xiii) any material pertaining to the assessment of
the SEPP1 objection, including any dealing with the
liklihood of the development proceeding if the SEPP1
exemption was not granted, or the economics of such
a scenario;
(xiv) any knowledge by RCC of intervention in the
assessment or determination process by politicians
or associates of political parties other than the
councillors themselves;
(xv) all material received from the DA's proponent,
its employees or consultants which was not exhibited
in the original DA exhibition file at RCC's front
counter from the outset of the public exhibition period;
(xvi) material provided by RCC's Precinct Co-ordinator
to RCC's Planning Dept and any replies;
(xvii) any material confirming that emails pertaining
to this DA were received by the Planning Dept, together
with any comments upon or analysis of such reports,
and in particular any evidence that the email reporting
the 181:1 vote at precinct level was received by those
within the Planning Dept.
In respect of relevant timeframes, for all those not
otherwise stated, the relevant timeframe is from twelve
weeks prior to the lodgement of the original (not
ammended) DA, and ends with the purported approval
on 27 May 2003.
Where such material exists in electronic form (eg
internal report drafts and emails) that material should
simply be copied to a CD-ROM, thereby keeping the
media cost to 70cents. Where it is bulky paperwork,
I am happy to be questioned by email as to which of
the available material is necessary and commit to
provide a prompt reply. As it is necessary to seek
legal advice promptly, could you please ensure that
the above-listed material is provided within days.
If you find this imposing, I am prepared to attend
RCC's administrative offices and go through the files
for this DA with your staff present and indicate the
(hopefully small) subset of the above that is actually
required after sighting of all such documents.
As you would understand, without access to the above
documents, it is impossible to determine the extent
to which bias was introduced during the assessment
process, whether planning staff were or were not aware
of the overwhelming vote of the precinct's resolution
against the excesses of the DA, which was not reported
in your assessment of public feedback, etc etc. Further,
without an ability to review the brief given to the
independent panel and their response(s), it is impossible
to assess what the independent experts thought. As
I have already raised with you, third party sources
have conflicted with your report. Similarly, we know
that at least two state political parties intervened
directly in discussions with councillors on the subject
of this particular DA, and we need to know the extent
to which this effect filtered into the planning department,
as it is hard to conceive that the planning department's
oversights and bias was a random event.
Yours faithfully
Graeme Harrison BE(Syd), BSc(VUW), MBA(Harvard), FAIM,
MNIA, MIEAust, MIEEE, JP
PS: With respect to the below-cited email, I never
heard back from either you or from Larissa that you
had complied with my last request that the public
be provided with a copy of the relevant source material
pertaining to the independent review process prior
to Tuesday evening's vote by councillors. Your decision
to withhold the relevant third-party expert information
from the person speaking on behalf of the community
and precinct will be another issue that will colour
a judge's opinion on how fair, open and transparent
the staff of RCC has been in this assessment process.
Sima,
Kerry & Larissa (of Randwick Council Planning
Dept),
In my last public email I asked that you provide a
copy of your report on the Maroubra Bay Hotel DA to
the Precinct Committee. You elected to not provide
such a copy.
When the community first met with you and the Mayor
on the matter of the Maroubra Bay Hotel DA, you assured
us that the DA would be assessed by eminent architect
Mr Collier... that hasn't happened. But what is more
amazing is that neither the Councillors nor the objectors
have been provided with a copy of the independent
review you did elect to carry out. All that is stated
in Sima's report is "no objections were raised"
but were no comments passed at all. It is always an
issue of great bias when someone insists on paraphrasing
another's work. I think it is a very important issue
that whatever comments were made be provided to the
Councillors and at least the precinct committee. Could
you please ensure that by noon today you have emailed
or faxed a copy of such independent review to Larissa
Andelman, who is contactable on the email address
shown above for her. She is a lawyer and will be speaking
on behalf of the precinct this evening. It will be
yet another issue of Council's bias in its determination
of this DA (when argued before the Land and Environment
Court) that you elected to not provide the relevant
material to both sides.
Regards
Graeme BE(Syd), BSc(VUW), MBA(Harvard), FAIM, MNIA,
MIEAust, MIEEE, JP
PS: Sima, in all my years as an expert witness, I
have never read such a one-sided report, which went
so far as to understate the views of the objectors.
The 46 page petition was presented to two councillors
at a public meeting. Bob Carr's office has been contacted
weekly for 8 weeks in attempts to deliver his copy
to him. In case a councillor has acted improperly
and not provided the full petition as filed to the
Planning Dept, I am couriering a copy of the 46 page
PDF document to you by 9am. Unfortunately it is too
large a file to be emailed. Similarly, you state in
your report that there was little public objection.
Let me remind you that, aside from the largest-ever
petition on such a matter, the public meeting of 182
people which voted 181:1 against the DA was the largest
ever in the precinct's history. And you could have
obtained these facts from emails sent directly to
you, or from articles in the local paper. In your
years of working under the former mayor of the notorious
Liverpool Council, you have obviously learnt lots
of tricks. It appears Cr Marjery Whitehead was correct
when she said to the 182 people at our first public
meeting "When the Labor Party wants to give favours
to its mates, the Planning Department reports always
support those DAs." Now I don't know how its
done either, but Marjery is pretty clearly insightful.
...
e-mail
Wednesday 28th May 2003
Dear
representatives of Multiplex,
This
email is to formally advise you that, notwithstanding
your overwhelming support from the major political
parties at last night's consideration by Randwick
City Council of the amended DA, the approval is flawed
and will be challenged at the Land & Environment
Court. RCC failed on quite a number of procedural
issues; RCC's planning dept's report was seriously
biased in a significant number of concrete areas and
was wrong at law in a number of important respects,
including quoting the DCP as having the opposite meaning
to its clear meaning on two important items. The report
also seriously and repeatedly understated the community
objection to only the aspects where the DA exceedes
the planning instruments. Indeed, the report stated
the petitioner number at one-tenth of the actual number
who objected. The number cited was from the original
short list of sheets submitted by Effie Manokuris
over the RCC counter at the outset. The fuller petition,
handed over to a Councillor and formally received
by that councillor on behalf of RCC, at a public meeting
somehow 'got lost' on its way to the planning dept.
There was also the issue of lack of public display
and feedback on important issues. Multiplex's diagrams
improperly showed the 'existing ground level' as passing
above the heads of pedestrians at street level, and
only the 3-D shadow diagrams shown to the public for
the first time an hour before the DA was approved
correctly showed ground level at McKeon St and that
the South half of the upper floor was thus above the
allowable building height. As Sima was not at RCC
when the DCP went through, she did not understand
that shading of the 'shared zone' was important as
there was overwhelming support for closing off much
of the Eastern end of McKeon Street, whereas your
submission and Sima's review dealt only with shading
of the footpath on the opposite side of the street.
Council's report, seen by a few members of the public
for the first time just 24-hours before the DA was
approved was the first mention that the public space
was being approved as an "outdoor area for seating
and entertainment". This is the first instance
that the public could have been made aware that, under
the DA as purportedly approved by RCC, the public
space was being fixed up by the proponent and was
to be used for 'seating and entertainment'. This fails
all protocols for appropriate public display. Finally,
the mayor was wrong at law in prohibiting a discussion
at council on limiting the DA to an FSR of 2, as proposed
by one councillor. That would have allowed the proponent
to have the flexibility in adjusting the overcrowding
of the site in whatever way the proponent desired,
and was less prescriptive than any other normal conditions
as often imposed by RCC.
Unfortunately, due to what has been publicly reported
as Multiplex's significant donations to the major
political parties (which is legal) and the clear interference
by the state political parties in influencing how
the councillors should vote (which ICAC has ruled
is illegal), the matter needs to go before a judge
to obtain a jurisdiction where Multiplex cannot purchase
the necessary favours. I found it amazing that after
the local member, Premier Bob Carr, could not find
the time over a few months of requests to his electoral
office to meet with the community to accept the petition,
he issued from his office a press release strongly
supportive of the DA just a day before the DA was
due to be determined.
The issue needs to be heard by an impartial judge,
solely on the basis of section 79C of the Environmental
Planning and Assessment Act 1979, which sets out planning
instruments and public interest and public submissions
as the criteria. Naturally councillors believe that
all of these things are guidelines and that their
personal opinions override, but the Land & Environment
Court determinations prove that this is not the case.
However, the community is prepared to enter into mediation,
as the issue really resolves around whether it is
reasonable for you to obtain 46-47 units (rather than
the requested 50) on such a small site of just 2000sqm.
We believe it may be financially advantageous for
you to consider public input and speed the process
up, rather than having the project languish for a
further six months.
The community has been clear that it does not oppose
the redevelopment of the site generally, but opposes
ONLY the extent to which the DA exceeds the parameters
prescribed by the DCP and to which it ignores the
impact on the adjoining elderly resident to the North-East.
On a slightly separate topic, by this morning (just
a few business hours after RCC's decision) you had
a contractor block off the majority of the footpath
for the total length of the development along both
street frontages. Importantly, even if one accepted
that RCC acted legally, all that was granted was a
'deferred consent' and Multiplex needs to achieve
further approvals of items yet to be produced, and
this typically takes some weeks. Accordingly, until
such time as you have obtained those further consents,
you are not allowed to commence any form of construction
work on this heritage item.
However, in any event, if you wish to close off a
significant portion of a footpath for private use,
I understand that you need a separate approval. By
closing the McKeon St footpath you are causing unnecessary
inconvenience to a large number of residents, including
many elderly ones, forcing them into the parked cars
or to cross the road or exposing them to tripping
on exposed concrete footings for such fencing.
When we have documented the further details of the
Land & Environment Court challenge, we will contact
you with such material, in an attempt to resolve the
outstanding issues, notwithstanding your ability to
influence the major political parties' elected representatives.
The community is only seeking small changes to the
upper excesses of the DA, and its impact on the elderly
neighbour, and we feel certain that, notwithstanding
the failure of our elected representatives to assess
the matter on the bases set out in the relevant law,
the court will modify the approval, and that mediation
may achieve such result on a more prompt basis.
Yours
sincerely
Graeme Harrison BE(Syd), BSc(VUW), MBA(Harvard), FAIM,
MNIA, MIEAust, MIEEE, JP
Maroubra
Beach roundabout (south end). There is now a flag
with 2035 flying from the roundabout light pole! Stay
tuned for that photo to accompany a newspaper story!
Maroubra's answer to Beverly Hills 90210?!
*Article
published with written permission from Graham Harrison
*You
are on Greg Tingle's website: PokerNewsMedia.com
www.PokerNewsMedia.com
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