More than 30 submissions objecting to six double-storey townhouses at Lake Munmorah say they are poorly designed, overcrowded, ugly, facing the wrong way and with minimal green areas or outdoor spaces to garden, or allow residents to catch a breeze or the sunshine.
Up We Go Developments wants to build the strata townhouses at 33 Greenacre Ave – one with four bedrooms and three bathrooms and the others to be three bedrooms with two bathrooms.
Each residence will have a single garage and there’ll be four visitor car parking spaces at the rear of the development.
“We are not anti-development or NIMBYs,” said one neighbour who prefers to remain anonymous.
“But this is one solid mass filling the entire length of the 122m block, designed to make the developer maximum profit at the expense of surrounding properties, the townhouse residents themselves and the community generally.
“The dwellings will be expensive to buy and expensive to rent and yet offer a depressed and miserable standard of living for residents as well as devastating effects for the environment, neighbours and community.
“The houses are crammed in tight, facing west when they could be facing north as are the rest of homes in Greenacre Ave, facing onto green and open spaces.
“They propose the minimum possible allowed courtyard space facing west which also contains all outdoor activities, clotheslines, vege gardens, three garbage bins and outdoor furniture!
“This is a block which has historically been swampy land and prone to flooding.
“If it goes ahead it will create a giant concrete dam across a natural drainage channel.
“The water table is very high and 33 Greenacre Ave has a functioning well!”
People objecting to the townhouses fear it will create a precedent for more unsuitable and “unscrupulous over-development” that simply is not designed for the residents who will live there.
They say that the architecture of the proposed development is “urban and tightly manoeuvred into one block” which is totally out of character with the single homes on large blocks supporting a green corridor of native trees and bush with prolific birdlife and wildlife.
One submission says Greenacre Ave is suitable for future growth but not intensive multi-dwelling attached housing, and there are other more appropriate areas for that type of development closer to schools, shopping, public transport, doctors and sporting amenities.
Objectors say the proposed development is excessive in height, scale and bulk for its location, expanding to fill every available space on the block with absolute minimum required open spaces and soft landscape, designed by a developer to maximise his profits with no regard for the environment, neighbourhood, street, neighbours, or wellbeing of occupants.
The development application says the townhouses will “occupy much of the site (1,689sqm)” and will “act as catalyst for further development of this nature”.
One submission says that the side view of this massive building is 102m of cheap, poorly designed bulk in one solid block, blocking views, visual privacy, sunlight and breezes to surrounding properties.
“There is simply no effort to relate to the prominent landscape features of open spaces and green backyard corridors that are existing here,” it says.
But it’s not just the over-development objectors relate to – it’s also the increased traffic in the quiet cul-de-sac (which already is in very poor condition), overflow parking in the street which is restricted because of the eroded chasms on the road edges, drainage issues because of overland water flow, over-shadowing and loss of privacy.
Single-storey dwellings are appropriate to the area and will also allay these issues, one submission says.
“Two homes on the one block with a break in between will allow for light, air, breezes, drainage, green spaces, backyard space, safe playing, outdoor activities, hobbies, gardens, garaging, all in keeping with the surrounding properties,” it says.
There are still a few days to place a submission for DA/636/2023 as Council has extended the due date because of the community interest.
Sue Murray
Those people objecting to this development forget that people may well have objected to their area being developed at the time of their moving in.
progress is inevitable.