Mudgee - A Sorry Tale
January 15 2007
The following is from Karl in Mudgee. As he said in an email
'the whole thing happened rather quickly' - which is probably why you won't find
any news items about it (yet!). Not quite sure how we can lend these folks a
hand - but I'm pretty sure we can. (Sammy) Our Council purchased some vacant land in the centre of our CBD some years
ago using what's called (in NSW) sect. 94 funds; ie money levied on the
town's retailers to provide public car parking. The plan was to turn this
land into a car park. A year or so back, the council converted this land's
designation from "community" to "operational" and then had a study done on
the site to prepare a development control plan. The plan was very expensive
(est. $100k) and also very bloody good. Council then called for expressions
of interest from developers to turn the site into a shopping/parking zone in
accordance with the DCP.
A Qld based co. called Red8 won the right to develop the land, their
submission ran pretty parallel to the DCP. They pulled out of the deal and
sold their interest to Stockland. Stockland submitted a development
application in Sept/Oct last year which was a massive box construction with
underground parking, fully enclosed shopping centre with a Supermarket,
major retailer, green grocer and 32 specialty retail shops. The town went
nuts, as did our Chamber of Commerce, the Mudgee Business Association.
After much objection, Stockland were told to go away and reduce the size of
the project, they returned within days with the same proposal less 7 shops
and Council approved it. One week later mind you, that's all it took.
There has been a significant amount of concern about Council tactics in
getting this project through and the speed it was done. Our town is 9,000
pop, we collected 4800 signatures in 10 days rejecting the DA. It still
went through. Stockland have never built in a town this small before, if
this goes ahead it will suck the life out of our town and destroy our unique
lifestyle.
We met with a Sydney lawyer this morning who is instructing a barrister for
us. She doesn't think we've got an easy fight on our hands and estimates it
could cost us upwards of $100k plus costs if we lose. We're still looking
at options.
Karl.
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