St Leonards Central Development/Channel 9 Contact List/NAG Petition

St Leonards Central: New Development

A new development concept plan has been lodged with the NSW Planning Department for an indication to proceed with a commercial/residential development proposal covering vacant land and airspace immediately to the north and east of St Leonards Station. The parts of the land are owned by State Rail, Willoughby Council and the Alto Group of companies and the Alto Group has formed a consortium with the construction group Brookfield Multiplex to redevelop the site as St Leonards Central.

The concept design proposes three new buildings of 38, 48 and 55 storeys high, being built over a three-level retail/commercial podium with a gross floor area (GFA) of approximately 121,000m2 and potentially including up to 1,300 new residential apartments.

As owners of part of the site, WCC have given their consent to the proposal being lodged with NSW Planning but at this stage have not given any indication to the developer of their consent to the initial concept plan. If the proposal is accepted by NSW Planning as a State Significant project, Council will be by-passed as the consent authority. It would be expected that the Director General of NSW Planning would issue a document called the Director General’s Requirements (DGRs) with a list of items that the developer would be required to respond to. Once the developer has addressed the DGRs a Development Application (DA) would be submitted and NSW Planning would put this on public exhibition with a request to the community to respond with their comments or counter-proposals.

Naturally enough, the scope of the proposal has met with grave concern from the local community with doubts expressed about overshadowing, additional traffic, parking, school capacity and transport infrastructure capacity. At a meeting convened recently by Naremburn Progress Association, a group called Naremburn Action Group (NAG) was formed and a decision taken to initiate a petition expressing opposition to the current proposal. A meeting with local member, Gladys Berejiklian has been arranged to discuss the project and inform her of the community’s reservations about the scope of the proposal.

NAG have asked for our support so please sign their petition which can be found at here. The petition will be presented to our State MP, Gladys Berejiklian next Friday so please respond as soon as you can.

If you’d like further information on this project you’ll find a list of relevant documents at Council’s Have Your Say web site at here.

Kind regards,

Bob Taffel