Developer to spar council

CLARENCE Valley Council's decision to reject the development application for a SPAR Supermarket, will likely be challenged in the Land and Environment Court.

Councillor Ian Tiley.

CLARENCE Valley Council’s decision to reject the development application (DA) for a new SPAR Supermarket in Church St, Maclean, will likely be challenged in the Land and Environment Court.

The project would cover more than 2000sq m of retail space, but despite council officers recommending its approval subject to conditions, councillors unanimously voted to reject it at last Tuesday’s council meeting.

Leading the opposition at the council meeting was Cr Ian Tiley, who raised concerns – supported by the other councillors – that building a new supermarket outside the Maclean CBD could harm the town’s commercial environment.

“We need to be sure our (Maclean) CBD doesn’t wither and die,” Cr Tiley said at the meeting.

Steve Tyson, co-founder of Consolidated Properties, which is the developer behind the project, said he was in “complete shock” about the application’s rejection.

“The thing that I was most amazed about was the fact we spent the last several months doing extra stuff at council’s request, such as providing extra reports on drainage, stormwater management, heritage consideration, spending thousands of extra dollars in the process, only to find out that none of it mattered,” Mr Tyson said.

Mr Tyson said it was extremely frustrating the application was rejected on the grounds of location when he said at no time in the six months since the application was lodged had any of the councillors raised concerns about the site with the developer.

“That could’ve been relayed to us, it could have been relayed to the council officers and quite frankly, if Ian Tiley or any of the other councillors had said to us three or four months ago, ‘Look, we don’t want this up there’, we probably wouldn’t have gone as far as we have,” he said.

Mr Tyson said he was also disappointed an independent survey of 274 people conducted by Development Advisory company Foresight Partners between May 18 and 21, which indicated a community preference (67%) for the Church St option, was dismissed by the councillors.

“We did the survey at the SPAR Supermarket in Maclean – the reason we did it there is because it’s the only place people can shop in Maclean,” he said.

“Ian Tiley made a comment that it (the survey) couldn’t be counted because people like shopping at SPAR and they favour SPAR, but the question wasn’t ‘Do you like SPAR or some other brand of supermarket?’, it was which location they would prefer a new supermarket to be in.

“It just reinforces the feeling that the council don’t want this in this location for whatever reason – they want to go ahead with the option down town.”

Mr Tyson said although Consolidated Properties preferred to work with councils rather than fight them, it had far too much invested in the Church St SPAR plan to simply walk away now.

“Because we’ve spent so much extra money at their request and we’re in so far now, we’ve got no choice but to take it to the Land and Environment Court,” he said.

“Our town planning advice is that we have an extremely strong case – we’ve got a site that’s zoned and we’ve got a recommendation from council officers, which counts for a lot in court.”

Mr Tyson said in the 30 years since Consolidated Properties was founded, it had been forced to go to court about six times in relation to various developments. Each time the company had come out on top.

Bob Little, the existing Maclean SPAR’s owner and driving force behind the proposed Church St site, is overseas.

However, Mr Tyson said he had been informed of the decision and was “in total shock about it”.

Originally published as Developer to spar council