Letters to Clover Moore

Letters to Clover Moore - Sydney City Mayor and NSW MP

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22 January 2010

Dear Clover Moore,
As a resident of one of Paddington's tiniest heritage precincts, I'm writing to seek your help over fears we are about to come under siege from a conga line of thousands of heavy construction vehicles as the College of Fine Arts begins a major redevelopment of its campus - a project forecast to last some 27 months.

Background
As I write, COFA is submitting a proposal to the City of Sydney to turn one-way backlane residential streets into a two-way truck route. This is despite making firm and specific commitments in its development application to create a large vehicle access as an initial activity before demolition began through its central campus via the nearby Greens Road - a larger route that fronts the campus and devoid of dwellings.
Thanks to Mr Rudd's stimulus package, the University now has around $50 million in hand, and wants to proceed in haste. Redevelopment consent was granted under Part 3A Major Projects, but has since been passed over to Sydney City Council to administer.

Now at issue
Suddenly and unexpectedly, under furtive cover of the holiday season, COFA seeks to reverse its earlier commitments to use Greens Road as its truck route. It now wants to funnel its trucks around its residential edges instead.

Put simply, COFA now hopes to minimise disruption to itself by maximising disruption to its neighbours - contrary to all previous commitments and promises. Affected areas of the campus were to be depopulated, but COFA now wants to keep more of its campus open while the development in train. They get their shiny new campus. We get the trucks.

Comment
COFA's Greens Road truck route commitments were made in response to the Director-General of Planning's Assessment Requirements, which asked COFA to state "specific measures to protect the amenity of surrounding residents in relation to truck movements". (Estimated to be some 2,000 to 4,000 truck movements for demolition alone.)

The commitments formed part of COFA's Environmental Assessment and its supporting Construction Management Plan. They were also given as firm verbal reassurances to residents at community briefings designed to smooth progression of its DA.

Please note: we have no problem with the development itself. Just the trucks.

COFA says it no longer wants to build the Greens Road truck access as it will add two or three months to its schedule. It says they will see what they can do to find another access point at some later stage in the construction process, but they could not give any guarantees.

This is no minor project. It will see two to three years of development activity with significant and unavoidable impacts on locals. However, at the least, COFA should shield neighbouring homes from their massive conga line of trucks, as they promised.

Please help make COFA truck off
 Clover, as our local State member, is there anything you can do to help us? COFA's actions are causing great stress and consternation amongst all residents who live on or nearby this proposed heavy construction traffic route. We are all deeply disturbed and disappointed by COFA's sudden and unwarranted backflip.

Thanks for your time.

.......................

Another letter to C. Moore....

As a recent arrival (2008) to Albion Avenue, I was not familiar (first-hand) with the background of the proposed COFA development, although I have been brought up-to-speed by the CLC in the last months.

Considering the history and the current set of facts, and the manner in which COFA and their partners have endeavoured to have this development re-started, you can only conclude that the local community is being both intentionally misled and bullied into submission. A few simple facts lead to this assessment:

1. Straight questions put at the CLC such as, ‘Have you completed a plan and costing for each of the four demolition and excavation options presented to the CLC, or just COFA’s preferred Albion Avenue option?’ and ‘Do you intend to use the proposed traffic management plan for phase 1 (demolition) for further phases (excavation and construction)?’ are met with either straight lies or vague, dismissive responses. In fact, the answers to these questions are ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ respectively.

2. There are multiple, and glaring, breaches of both the letter and spirit of the approved DA by COFA - none of which are acknowledged by COFA.

3. COFA’s desire to get the project underway in haste has led to shortcuts in the process, incomplete assessments of the demolition and construction route options, and an at-best superficial consultation with the local community.

4. The residents agreed, in good faith, to the initial development - as long as the impact on the area was both recognised and minimised. Yet the proposed truck traffic plan for phases 1 and 2 of the development sees the impact on the area both ignored and maximised.

5. COFA’s intends to take one option for the traffic plan (the residential truck route option least preferred by the residents) to Council for approval - overturning COFA’s prior promises and irrespective community feedback. This new proposed traffic plan is unsafe, extremely intrusive and ill-considered.

In agreeing to this development initially, the local community has simply sought fair treatment - to minimise the significant effect this will have on our lives for the 2-3 year demolition and construction cycle. Largely, the owners and residents want the development to proceed - for the benefit of COFA and the wider community.

During this time, the intrusion will be huge- noise and air pollution, traffic congestion, parking shortages, potential structural damage to homes and an overall loss of living quality will be the price the residents pay for this development. Other effects not mentioned publicly are the likely negative impact on house prices and rental income that will arise from living in proximity of such a large demolition and construction site over this lengthy period. Despite the many negatives, the community agreed to the initially proposed plan, reassured by COFA’s promises we would be shielded, at least, by truck movements running via Greens Road.

It is hard to believe that COFA has now acted in such a covert and deliberately aggressive manner in the wake of this gesture of goodwill by the local community.

The facts are:
1. The proposed traffic management plan for phase 1 is a poor one - it is unsafe, logistically flawed and designed to minimise the disruption to COFA by maximising disruption to the lives of residents.
2. The local community is being misled on the options available to COFA on phase 1.
3. The local community is being misled on the plans for phases 2-4.
4. The local community is being unreasonably pressured into agreeing to a single, completely unpalatable solution.

With this in mind, I would expect the City of Sydney Council to do what is right for the community - both local and at large. The traffic management part of the development proposal should be declined, and COFA and their suppliers sent back to the drawing board to design a plan that balances the needs of COFA with a material minimisation of the impact on the local community.
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