BRUMBIES DEVELOPMENT APPLICATION CALLED-IN

After four months of consideration of the Brumbies Development Application by the planning area within the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate, Minister Corbell has short circuited the normal planning process by his decision to call-in and approve the Brumbies’ proposal to redevelop their club house site on 5 April 2013. 

The Brumbies had propose to move their club headquarters t a site near the University of Canberra and redevelop their existing clubhouse site into 134 apartments.

It is not possible to seek a review of Minister Corbell’s decision through the ACAT (the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal). 

The Ministerial press release advising of the decision indicates that the number of dwellings has only been reduced from 134 to 131.  Despite this minor change, the proposal will still have, at 78 dwellings per hectare, a dwelling density which is generally regarded as high density, rather than the medium density residential development (25-60 dwellings/ha) required under RZ4 zoning. 

No formal decision on the DA lodged by the Brumbies has yet been released to the public or to parties that lodged representations, despite the Minister’s press announcement, so it is impossible to determine what conditions have actually been imposed on the development.  However, it would appear from the Minister’s statement that a number of issues have not been resolved:
•	As only nine Visitor Parking Spaces have been provided on the site, visitor parking arrangements do not appear to comply with the parking requirements of the planning rules.  Under the accepted reading of these rules the development would be required to provide 34 visitor parking spaces (if this requirement can be complied with by asserting that visitors can park in preexisting parking spaces in adjacent streets, what is the meaning of “provide” and why would any developer ever bother to make “on site” provision for visitor parking?).  
•	The inevitable the increased traffic flows resulting from a development of this size seem to have been ignored.  
•	The situation with regard to the flood study is unclear.  The Minister’s statement asserts that “all of the relevant conditions recommended by the Standing Committee are conditions of the approval”.  The Standing Committee which approved rezoning of the site recommended, inter alia, that 
	“any redevelopment of Section 42, Block 15 Griffith be conditional on 	comprehensive flood studies being undertaken and made publicly available; the 	studies to model not only impacts on Section 42 but also flooding impacts on 	surrounding areas and those towards Canberra Avenue pre and post development, 	recognising that any use of infill on Block 15 may impact on flooding in nearby 	areas.” 
Despite this clear indication of intent, no such new and comprehensive flood study has been undertaken.  The March 2009 Flood Study Report prepared for the Brumbies appears to rely on data collected for a 1999 review of a 1978 review of the then existing South Canberra storm water system prepared by the Department of Housing and Construction.  The applicability of some of this data to present circumstances must be doubtful.

The announcement of the decision to call in the proposed development must be read in conjunction with the recent media release from the University of Canberra (UC) announcing a “state of the art sports hub on (the UC) campus” costing $15m, with UC, the Brumbies and the ACT Government each contributing $5m.  It would appear that the Brumbies needed the development to be approved to have their share of the required funding available.

The Minister’s statement refers to the “substantial public benefit this project will provide for the broader community”.  We can only assume that the alleged substantial public benefit is the reason the Minister decided to call in the proposal, as is provided for in the Planning and Development Act 2007.  Given that the benefits to the general public of this hijacking of the usual planning processes are not particularly self evident, members of the public might be forgiven if they suspect that Minister Corbell has confused benefit to the public with benefit to the Brumbies. 

The GNCA regards this as a very disappointing outcome.  

However, not all our efforts have been in vain.  Without the GNCA and the community’s efforts, we would now probably have no Precinct Code to protect the surrounds of the clubhouse site and Griffith Oval No 1 would not be listed as a heritage site.  These are substantial achievements.