Letter to the editor
Boarding house puts noses out of joint
It seems people have had their noses put out of joint (“Boarding house approved for Renwick Street”, CityNews 28 July 2011). I lived in a boarding house for twenty-two years and the development of a new boarding house in Renwick Street is entirely appropriate.
It’s simply snobbery that residents oppose the development. It’s mostly single people and couples that will live in the boarding house and if they don’t fit the image of a “family of four” and the perfect way of life, then too bad.
Stuart Baanstra
Mascot
Flaws in council’s planning process
Glenn Lockitch is right to complain about Sydney Council’s DA consent to site amalgamation and demolition of cherished 1921 industrial heritage in Woolloomooloo, sites whose uses date back to 1854 (“Heritage value maintained but residents not happy”, City News, July 28). Heritage is not a look but is only about one thing: significance. So council’s retention of a front wall cannot and does not maintain this site’s heritage significance including magnificent, rare, full-width, internal, single-span, wooden truss beams. Council’s decision reduces it heritage value to facadism and tokenism.
Even the developer’s own heritage report notes that these sites are “reasonably intact and important to NSW’s cultural history with important aesthetic characteristics and of local heritage significance.”
Yet council’s fundamentally-flawed, biased planning process failed to notify residents living adjacent about the DA, even when notified pre-decision, and failed to recognise fatal flaws in the background report which sealed this site’s fate. Cui bono? Only the developer benefits. All councillors were negligent and failed to satisfy their legal duties under section 8 of the Local Government Act to “exercise community leadership; properly manage, enhance and conserve the environment; have regard to long-term effects of decisions; exercise functions consistent with principles of equity, access, participation; and act without bias.”
This risible DA blatantly breaches 12 Conservation Area rules including site amalgamation, 47 Heritage planning rules and 5 major breaches of council’s statutory Local Environment Plan. So whose council is this? Ratepayers or developers?
We have written to our local MP, Clover Moore, but expect no resolution due to inherent conflicts of interest.
Andrew Woodhouse
President
Potts Point and King Cross Heritage Conservation Society
