A LOCAL developer is seeking Cockburn city council’s blessing to rezone its property in Beeliar, allowing it to build 54 apartments instead of the 11 it is restricted to now.
Nearby locals are fighting the move, saying the bid for spot rezoning makes a mockery of the suburb’s structure plan and relatively low density neighbourhoods.
If Terranovis wins the council’s blessing, it will require formal rezoning approval from the WA planning commission and WA lands department. Without council blessing, neither authority is likely to agree.
Terranovis owns 6.4ha near the Beeliar Drive and Spearwood Avenue roundabout and reckons it can put 54 apartments there across three storeys, if the land is rezoned from R20 to R60.
Near-neighbour Frank Van Wees says it’s “the wrong place for this type of development”.
“Why do we have a relatively small parcel of land rezoned to R60 while all the land around it is R20?” he asks.
“We have been waiting for a bit of landscaping to stop the traffic noise for more than three years, and only had 10 trees planted to stop the noise and the cement dust. This is a joke. Stop turning our neighbourhood into a concrete jungle.”
Melinda Hicks says she bought into the area because of its low density.
“It was a conscious decision not to purchase a property immediately next to the higher density zones,” she says.
“It would be a mockery of the integrity of adopting such a considered structure plan only to for it to be simply changed later, thereby destroying any confidence any purchaser could have in the structure plan originally adopted.
“What is the point of having a structure plan in the first place then?”
David Holmes says his home will be shadowed.
“The reason we bought this plot was due to the fact it has a north-facing garden and so we benefit from the winter sun and as much sunlight all year round, and these proposed plans would disrupt this,” he says.
“The traffic in the area of an extra 54 apartments could gridlock and make the easiest of journeys a lot more difficult, also the extra noise and pollution that an extra 54 apartments would be very inconvenient.”
by BRENDAN FOSTER