Gold Coast development: Light Rail-inspired new towers ‘four or five times bigger than allowed
New towers built on the light rail route are “four or five times” higher than they should have been, a shock new report has revealed as the push to build more intensifies.
Gold Coast
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THE first stage of light rail provided more than 20,000 extra homes and led to developments being four or more times higher than allowed, a new report says.
The council has revealed the negative links between trams and overdevelopment as it attempts to convince the State Government to accept all of its reforms to the City Plan.
Council after exhaustive consultation is backing concerned residents, but Planning Minister Steven Miles refuses to accept reforms around tram building densities and super tower heights.
Councillors and officers are being sent back to workshops — and in what stakeholders describe as a “nightmare scenario” more community consultation must be held.
Main Beach Association leader Sue Donovan is furious with the state, citing a light rail overlay planning map which would see their suburb turn into “another Hong Kong”.
“The Main Beach Association congratulates council for carrying out on-the ground inspections of development sites in Main Beach,” Ms Donovan said.
“They witnessed for themselves what the community has been fighting since the implementation of 2016 City Plan — the perfectly legal overdevelopment of small sites through decreased setbacks and increased site cover.
“Minister Miles in refusing to approve the modest reforms proposed by the amendments to the City Plan is simply parroting the claims of the development industry lobby. It’s a furphy that this is about increasing affordable housing supply. What his refusal is really about is “development feasibility” —in other words, developer profits.”
The Bulletin can reveal more than 100 high-rise towers centred around the light rail route in the pipeline are either proposed, under construction or approved by the council.
Development industry sources say many more are on the horizon, despite the building sector struggling against high material costs and the collapse of several major companies, including Condev.
A City officer report recommending future action was considered by councillors at a planning committee meeting on Thursday.
Planning committee chair Cameron Caldwell told the Bulletin council was “disappointed” not to receive full approval from the State for the amendment 2 and 3 package.
The portion of the package approved along with heritage changes would start on July 4.
“The Minister’s decision has caused delay and a huge amount of re-drafting work to be done in order to facilitate implementation of what we believe to be important planning reforms,” Cr Caldwell said.
“The amendments to City Plan were responsive to community needs. The Deputy Premier stood in the way of us delivering better planning in many Gold Coast suburbs including Main Beach, Mermaid Beach, Palm Beach and Currumbin.
“We will persist with amendments to deliver much needed housing throughout the city providing new opportunities in well located suburbs.”
Cr Hermann Vorster who along with Cr Owen-Jones in protest voted against the current limited package being approved, at the meeting accused the Government of a “hatchet job”.
“We are being asked to endorse a compromised version of what the community wants,” he said.
“Anyone struggling to put a roof over their head or protect their lifestyle are now Miles worse off.”
A councillor workshop would be held in March to determine the timing of the process before another round of community consultation.
Cr Owen-Jones gained unanimous support when he proposed that Mr Miles and Environment Minister and Gaven MP Meaghan Scanlon attend the workshop.
He said it was not an attempt at “an us and them thing” rather get a “genuine conversation on how we can progress this thing” instead of creating another 12 month delay.
The report said Mr Miles considered council’s planning amendments to be “substantial” and had the potential to impact on the delivery of the required housing supply under the South East Queensland Regional Plan.
Light rail is expected to help deliver an extra 440,000 residents to the Coast by 2041.
Mr Miles reminded council that following the accelerated growth experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a shortage of housing and affordable housing.
In his emails, he also referred to construction costs, following shortages in building material and labour, causing pressure on development feasibility.
He is seeking more information on these complex matters because he “cannot conclude the extent to which these changes will impact housing supply” and impact on the market.
The report says City and State officers have undertaken two workshops to discuss options to advance the outstanding planning items. They toured Main Beach and Broadbeach.
City planners warned that since the 2016 City Plan was introduced there had been:
• increasing housing supply by over 20,000 dwellings in the Stage 1 light rail corridor.
• a new light rail urban renewal area overlay to promote more intensive development.
• red tape reduction by streamlining planning assessments.
• generous conversion of heights from storeys to metres, with a 50 per cent additional height test provided in urban neighbourhoods.
Officers said there had been frequent “over development” of sites within high density and medium density residential zoned land, particularly on smaller lots due to a combination of taller buildings, substantial density increases, reduced setbacks and higher site cover.
Developments were “performance based” and the outcomes were different to what was acceptable. The community had rejected these allowances.
Some projects were “four or more times the density sought”.
State officers said those planning items not approved by the Minister would be advanced as new packages but they “will require public consultation”.
Development industry sources believe there will be a rush by developers to gain approval for projects along the future light rail route to pre-empt any potential changes to the City Plan.
Any amendments would not be retroactive, meaning any project which has already been approved under the current plan would be exempt from any moves to limit height or density.
Billions of dollars worth of projects along the light rail route have already been given the green light by council.
Developer and Gold Coast Light Rail Business Advisory Group chairman Stephen Harrison said the beachfront areas near the tram route were being snapped up.
“It’s fair to say there has been some speculation on sites and development along the beachside corridor by people who are not historically in the industry,” he said.
“Lots of players have entered the market but they haven’t got in with the due diligence of the process and therefore those sites will come back on (the market) and those developers who are producing multiple projects will look at purchasing those sites and add them to portfolio.”
Among the experienced developers with plans to develop on the Broadbeach to Burleigh light rail rail route are Aniko Group’s George Mastrocostas, Sunland Group founder Soheil Abedian and Morris Property Group’s Barry Morris.
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