An increasing sign of the times, with more community advocacy groups flexing their organisational skills plus their own wallets.
The Deakin Residents’ Association has hired ACT planning department consulting firm Resolution Planning as part of its submission against Provectus Care’s planned 102-bed two-storey aged care facility in the suburb.
Consultant Ted Streatfeild writes in their submission the development is non-compliant with Canberra’s Development Control Plan, with the building and courtyard walling too high, existing trees left unprotected and the proposed facility’s basement level visible from the street.
At the same time in QLD, the Save Our Community Green advocacy group wants to buy the Coorparoo Bowls Club in Brisbane to stop an 80-unit retirement village being built on the site by Bowls Queensland and Tim Russell’s village operator Aura.
Aura had formed a memorandum of understanding with Bowls Queensland, which acquired the site for $1 in 2010 after the club fell into debt, to develop the village.
While a DA is yet to be lodged, Bowls Queensland president Peter Williamson told the Courier-Mail the club will be unable to survive without changes as its maintenance and ongoing costs were $100,000 a year.
Can the advocacy groups fund an alternative bid to purchase the club? Unlikely, but not out of the question these days.
