Community fights back over revised aged village plans

Bateau Bay residents have ramped up their protest campaign over a major redevelopment at Nareen Gardens retirement village, saying that revised plans by Uniting NSW ACT are still not acceptable.

During the past month since the revised development application (DA) was lodged with Central Coast Council, the Bateau Bay Community Collective has taken their battle to the streets with signs popping up everywhere around the area with the message: “Uniting – Hands off our ‘hood. Bateau Bay says no to high-rise apartments”.

The Collective is also distributing petitions and a professional town planner has again been engaged to present their submission on this latest DA.

Although Uniting has scaled back the original proposal by 20 percent, the Collective spokesperson Erin Breneger says the development is still too big and basically still a mix of two and three-storey buildings out of character for this low-density area.

“We accept that the retirement village needs to be upgraded but we want to make sure it’s done appropriately,” she said.

Breneger said there were concerns about the displacement and upheaval, both physically and emotionally, of existing residents at Nareen Gardens before, during and after the redevelopment with construction expected to take six years.

“There is still no word on when or where residents will be moved to,” she said.

“They have the option of staying and having to move three or four times during the six years of construction, or either selling and moving on, or moving to an undisclosed similar independent living unit.

“The residents are very distressed and there seems to be a lot of concern in the village about their future and living in vertical villages,” Breneger said.

She said other major points of objection remained the same despite the revisions by Uniting.

“It’s the height, density and scale of the buildings, which are still three or four storeys, and totally out of character for this area.

“There has been little or no attempt to come up with a viable solution over traffic and parking issues particularly on Altona Ave, but also on Bias Ave.

“Also, we still have privacy concerns which Uniting has attempted to fix with landscaping and vegetation planting but we don’t want seedlings that take years and years to grow, we need mature trees for our privacy now.

“And then there’s the estimated construction timeline and the disruption that will cause to both neighbouring private residents as well as the elderly residents within Nareen Gardens,” Breneger said.

Uniting’s revised development application (DA-882) is on public exhibition until Friday, July 15 and details on how to make a submission are available on the facebook page of Bateau Bay Community Collective or on Central Coast Council’s website.

The community group formed when Uniting presented its original DA in October 2021 with plans to overhaul Nareen Gardens into a $148M six-building vertical village development.

Subsequently, comments made by Council and the Hunter/Central Coast Regional Planning Panel, together with community concerns, forced Uniting to draw up a new masterplan with significant changes.

Some of the main changes are the removal of Building 4 completely and removing the top floors from three buildings and reducing the size of two buildings on Altona Ave.

Removal of Building 4 has allowed more community open space and greater separation between the residential buildings.

The new plan proposes a 20 percent decrease in independent living apartments to 186 and an extra 28 accessible ground-level apartments with courtyards across five buildings.

Uniting says the amendments made have substantially reduced the bulk and scale of the development, lessened the shading of neighbouring properties, and increased landscaping especially along the eastern boundary.

Sue Murray