Renewed push for resort, villas and apartments at Palm Cove
A high rise resort complex would be the centrepiece of a lavish proposal for a prime northern beaches spot, with the developers now in a concerted push to get the project over the line with council.
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Highly controversial plans to build a resort, apartments and villas at a prime Palm Cove site have been dramatically revived after almost three years of silence from the developers.
Proponents have unveiled spectacular plans for part of the 3.85ha site at 33-41 Cedar Rd – but they’ve scaled back an eight-storey resort with a height of 28m to a six storey resort with a height of 20m.
Bulldozers rolled in around April 2021, igniting local fury, and the western part of the cleared land sold last May for $9m to Pelican Inn Pty Ltd, whose director is John Kelly of Sydney-based Wentworth Group, a privately owned property investment and development company. That land that has been marketed as Beach Haven Estate with 16 lots.
Now the owners of the remaining land – Palm Cove Nominees, whose directors are listed as Melbourne-based Jack Rosen Melbourne and Sydney pair Fred Bart and Garry Kam – have planned a resort, villa and apartment precinct.
The voluminous original development application was submitted in November 2017, prompting an outcry from locals who formally objected.
Council was swamped with thousands of objections as an activist army on the northern beaches mobilised against the proposal.
Council sent a “further issues” letter in May 2020 saying “council officers do not support the proposal … issues relate to the proposed building height, traffic and access, vegetation removal, setbacks and site cover”.
The developer applied eight times for an extension of time.
The 120-room resort will have a gym and day spa, pool bar, and boutique retail, restaurant and conference facilities.
It would have 90 car parks.
There will be 17 two-storey villas with 26 car parks.
The apartments will comprise seven three storey buildings with 28 one-bedroom apartments, 14 three-bedroom apartments, a pool and barbecue area and 67 car parks.
The document states the redesign of the resort precinct is primarily about reducing the building height, but it has also refined the design of the villa and apartment precincts and done a visual impact and traffic impact assessment.
It says to cut the height of the building, ancillary elements such as conference and function facilities, a restaurant and bar, had been relocated from the main building to be low rise structures to the northeast portion of the site.
Public submissions on the development can be made from March 13 to April 5.
Eight of the 16 residential lots have sold.
Lot sizes in the new cul-de-sac – which has a $2.2m council-funded road through it – range from 420sq m to 869sq m.
The new trunk road links the current dead-end Oliva St to Cedar Rd, with a new roundabout linking the two roads with Coral Coast Dr.
Representatives of Palm Cove Nominees did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
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Originally published as Renewed push for resort, villas and apartments at Palm Cove
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