‘We do not want Currumbin to become Palm Beach’

The Currumbin community is making a last-minute plea to residents to save their unique suburb – with residents given expert advice on what they need to do.

Aerial view of Currumbin

THE Currumbin community is making a last-minute plea to residents to save their unique suburb by backing a submission on a City Plan before consultation closes later today.

The Save Our Currumbin action group has placed a clock timer on its web page giving a countdown to the end of council consultation at 5pm and provided a template for residents who want to make a response.

Aerial view of Currumbin Beach on the Gold Coast. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

Peter Janssen, the group’s co-ordinator, told the Bulletin: “The Currumbin community commissioned Queensland’s top town planner Greg Ovenden, who has now completed his report and encapsulated the Save Currumbin submissions in a comprehensive submission. We lodged Save Currumbin Report and submissions with council last Friday.”

Mr Janssen said the group had received more than one million hits on its website and was aware that hundreds of people were using the template model submissions. In September, a campaign led to council overruling officers and stopping a unit development.

Plans for units in Pacific Parade at Currumbin on the Gold Coast which were opposed by council.

The recommended changes by the group include:

* Apply a 12 metre and 3 storey height limit to Pacific Parade and Duringan Street and any other lots in front of the significant ridges and hills of Currumbin.

* Introduce a provision which ensures a significant hills protection overlay to strongly protect natural land forms of Currumbin Hill excluding all development to the west of the neighbourhood centre.

* Maintain the current neighbourhood zone code provision with respect to hours of operation and repeal the proposal for the late-night bar and dining precinct in Currumbin.

On its website, the group said Currumbin was unique to the Coast for its village feel, vegetated hills, cliffs and ridges which bring tropical rainforest and its animals to an iconic family friendly beach near the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.

The proposed amendments to the City Plan included a “ridiculous 15 metre building height overlay that trumps 3 storey limits demanded by the community and ignores the ridges and significant hills protection overlay code”.

View from the beach at Currumbin.

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The group said it did not want the beach suburb to “go the way of Palm Beach, which has seen rampant over-development, or become a Surfers Paradise or Broadbeach high rise late night adult entertainment bar and restaurant precinct”.

“We have enough venues to cater for residents and tourists who come to Currumbin for family holidays,” the group said. “We do not want to lose our green vegetated cliffs and the animals that depend on them to high rise apartment complexes that ruin amenity and take scarce public car parks to one of the most popular beaches in the country.”

The ACE Community Alliance has also sent a lengthy submission to council which across 19 pages provides specific recommendations to stop “bulky buildings’ without landscaping.

“The council did not update the density overlay maps for the City Plan 2016 but has tacitly approved development applications where density exceeds the prescribed densities by tow, three or four times,” ACE said in its submission.

View of Currumbin Hill - photograph taken by Remco Jansen.

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“This undermines community confidence in the operation and good governance of the development assessment and approval process with non-complying examples seen throughout the city.”

ACE has asked that developments becomes impact assessable when they exceed the stipulated density, sitecover or setbacks, removing height as the only impact trigger.

The community could then have an input and opportunity for appeal, preventing the poor outcomes created by the development boom in Palm Beach.