MORE height in exchange for green space: that’s a recipe for planning success says Fremantle council candidate Roel Loopers.
The Beaconsfield ward candidate says his “percentage for green space” initiative should be adopted across the municipality, but would be particularly apt in the East End if it’s filled with thousands of extra apartment-dwellers.
He says it could also be applied to commercial developments, providing workers somewhere pleasant to sit and eat their lunch.
“If you look at the public space that was created around … Central Park in Perth, it’s packed at any time of the day,” the former Fremantle Society president says.
Lamenting the loss of Freo’s trees, he wants the council to assign every tree a dollar value, so developers who remove them must either pay a fee, plant an equivalent number in a site designated by the council, or move them.
He says the Brad Pettitt-led council should never have agreed to LandCorp clear-felling the old Kim Beazley School site.
“That’s the shortcoming of this council—there are people that call them the concrete Greens—they are so careless with the green environment, they allow too many trees to be killed, and they don’t look after the parks very well.
“Have a look at Booyeembara Park—there’s not that many trees big enough to sit under and get some decent shade.”
• Roel Loopers says Fremantle council should offer developers more height if they cough up some green space. Photo by Steve Grant
Mr Loopers says his scheme shouldn’t apply to the West End, where he says developers already get extra height to the detriment of its heritage. And he says the council should outright reject a proposed revamp of the old Fremantle Workers’ Club which includes a fifth-storey “loft”.
His heritage platform took a hit a fortnight ago following his acrimonious resignation from the Fremantle Society’s executive committee. He says he’d asked the committee to back his campaign as it had done in the past for other members who’d run for office, but his request was met with stony silence.
“So I slept it over and decided that because I do 90 per cent of the committee work, and am the only one that goes to nearly every council meeting and public forum, and meet with Notre Dame and the only one that reports back on what’s happening in Fremantle, that that was being taken for granted,” he said.
In 2012 Mr Loopers resigned as society president after just weeks in the job, claiming to have ben undermined by “gutless weasels” within the organisation.
He says if he’s elected to council he’ll stick out his term, no matter what.
by STEVE GRANT
