The Module Redevelopment DA 545/2013

This letter was from a concerned resident.  All objections must be in by 3 March.

Dear Mayor, Councillors and Town Planner,
We, residents in Malton Rd, Beecroft would like to express our strong objection to this development application. The reasons for our objection are as follow:
1. Beecroft is one of the rare and well maintained leafy residential suburbs, which makes it perfect for families and those that love nature. The proposed building will not blend into our existing low rise residential housing. We already have many high rise building in nearby suburbs, so the developer should look for those locations instead of building an eye-soring structure in the middle of a village.
2. School, child care center, retirement residential complex surrounding the Beecroft Village, it is not the ideal location to position a high dense commercial development building, in particular a large shopping mall. It generates high volume of traffic in the area, but our current infrastructure would not be able to cope. We already experienced congested traffic condition and this DA will cause further congestion to the area, which is not suitable for high pedestrian crossing and post a high risk to our school children.
3. Please remember we had a terrible accident at the corner of Hannah and Beecroft Rd about a year ago. We cannot afford and would not like to repeat the same tragic event.
4. With the high volume of traffic adding to the area, it creates a safety hazard for our community.
5. Beecroft Rd and Hannah St is already a choking point, any additional traffic will cause the place to be a chaos.
6. It is not a good development for our area, as the majority of the residential unit is one bedroom. It will become a student lodge, which means there will be high turn over of tenants and they would be less conscience to our environment. This will impact our ecosystem and will further deteriorate our bushland. We work extremely hard to preserve our bushland and do not want it to be destroyed.
7. With such high volume of residential units, there will be many cars being parked at the complex and usually would cause overflow onto the nearby streets and railway parking area. This will create unnecessary pressure to our residents.
8. According to the Zoning map, CP 2010-08, the subject area is classified as Business, so it should not comprise of residential units on top of the shops.

Please consider in the best interests of our community and reject the DA.

Councils Backing Big Commercial Centres?

Some are saying that Shire Councils do not encourage small commercial centres like Beecroft Shopping Village, preferring large retail centres like Westfield at West Ryde and Hornsby.

This could explain why Hornsby Shire Council seem not to be resisting the downgrade of the Module from 26 retail and commercial outlets to just 11 under the proposed DA. 

If you disagree, and think that village shopping centres like Beecroft are important to communities, be sure to write or email Horsnby Shire Council to protest against DA 545/2013.

Student Accommodation for Beecroft Shopping Centre

An article in the weekend "Smart Money' in the Australian Financial Review discusses the shortage of student accommodation in Sydney, clearly relevant to the proposal to build nearly 140 units at The Module in Beecroft Shopping Village.  More than half of these units will be single bedroom, clearly aimed at students.

The article says that Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC recently bought a majority interest in IGLU, the student accommodation group, confirming the signs that this style of accommodation is becoming a lucrative investment.

Analysis of the latest DA/545/2013 shows proposed provision of units is as follows:

3 Studio Units 35 sqm
75 1 bedroom units 50 to 60 sqm
43 2 bedroom units approx 85 sqm
18 3 bedroom units 95 to 120 sqm

The Module Beecroft

An updated version of the Development Application for The Module in the Beecroft Shopping Village has been received.  Submissions on this application, for or against, must be in by 3 March.  The BCCT Committee is meeting with Hornsby Shire Councilors seeking information on progress against our original list of concerns, and this Blog will report on the result of that meeting.

The DA is, as before, DA / 545/2013 now proposing 139 mostly single bedroom units, which could be called a student residential accommodation block.  Student accommodation might make sense if the rail link to Macquarie University was direct, but under the North West Rail Link students will have to get off at Epping and join all the other commuters fighting to get on the NWRL toward the city.

The proposal talks of providing a mixed use commercial and residential building.  In practice it offers a supermarket and 11 specialty shops (commercial and retail).  This compares with 26 such shops and offices in the present Module building.  Hardly an exercise in developing a shopping centre, it seems to be just a token response to the zoning of the building as Mixed Residential and Retail.