DEAR News Of The Area,
LAST Wednesday, I attended the ‘drop-in’ community consultation at Hawks Nest Community Hall for the proposed Sanderling Avenue beachfront development, located between Hawks Nest Golf Club and Bennetts Beach (Lot 1, DP 1234229).
This is the same development that was the subject of the 2021 Four Corners episode ‘Obeid Inc.’
These days, a citizen must actively make themselves aware of such situations, a process well assisted by reading the established media, asking the right questions to the right people, and investigating the dubious contents of social media.
Legally, any such proposal requires some level of community consultation, although I only found out about this drop-in via Facebook a few days before it happened.
The development is described as “three apartment buildings, up to four storeys, containing 104 units ranging from 1- to 4-bedrooms”, and has been taken out of MidCoast Council’s hands, instead landing in the NSW Government’s State Significant Development (SSD) system, under the new Housing Development Authority (HDA).
The HDA’s officially stated goal is “to accelerate the delivery of much needed homes and help meet our target under the National Housing Accord”.
The same State Government webpage also says, “The NSW Government is committed to providing the homes that young people, families and workers need through reforms that are designed to streamline planning approvals for major housing developments.”
The consultants offered no price tag estimate for the units, but the similarly-sized, older buildings along Beach Road, Hawks Nest, currently go for a million or more, per unit, depending on the storey.
When I asked the consultants last week how the Sanderling Avenue development would address the ‘housing crisis’, the response was “people can move out of houses and into the apartments” – a concept I found difficult to imagine, as all sales will be at market prices, and it is entirely possible that any house sold could actually go for less than the apartment bought.
One statistic repeated to many who asked was the traffic at the corner of Tuloa Ave and Sanderling Ave potentially increasing by 20-30 vehicles per hour ‘in peak morning and afternoon times’, or ‘234 cars per day’, thanks to those expected to buy into or access the four-storey luxury development between the golf course and the beach.
This Sanderling Avenue proposal is a long way from being finally approved, as it has only cleared the first of eight stages in the SSD process.
The most effective thing any local or concerned citizen can do now is to have their say via the appropriate means, that being an email to sanderling@maraconsulting.com.au, or a filling-out of the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SANDERLING.
“Qui tacet consentire videtur” or “silence implies consent”.
I should also add that MidCoast Council may also lose out on the situation long-term if it turns out to have only one ratepayer for the entire development, as is the case for each of the retirement villages on the western side of Tea Gardens.
A similar scenario was recently presented to Council, seeking to cut Council out of around 200 ratepayers by using the deliberately nebulous phrase ‘affordable housing’.
Sincerely,
Councillor Thomas O’KEEFE, Hawks Nest resident and MidCoast Councillor.
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