After a long delay, City of Darwin finally announced its consultation on the idea of building a Cafe/Restaurant on the Nightcliff Foreshore near the Nightcliff Swimming pool.
Lord Mayor Katrina Fong Lim made it quite clear on ABC TV News (25.3.2013) that those who are totally against any such building here on the foreshore headland, that is who are for the 'status quo', can say so now, in the consultation process.
The attachment below from the C of D website provides an outline of the situation.
There is additional information on the C of D website which you can find by searching 'Nightcliff Foreshore Consultation'.
Council's online survey has great detail about preferring one of the two optional buildings, but there is nowhere you can state you are against any buildings at all in this location.
The consultation will close at 5pm on 6 May, 2013.
IF, LIKE ALL MEMBERS OF THE PLAN COMMITTEE, YOU WISH TO VOTE FOR NO NEW BUILDINGS ON THE NIGHTCLIFF FORESHORE AT THIS LOCATION, WE SUGGEST YOU SIMPLY EMAIL THE REFERENCE OFFICER LISTED AT THE END OF THE SURVEY AS FOLLOWS AND SAY SO:
For further information please contact the City of Darwin, Anna Malgorzewicz, Senior Community Engagement Officer on (08) 8930 0404 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
CORRECTION
After two people searched unsuccessfully to find within the 'consultation survey, a place to vote for the 'status quo' , that is, NO CAFE/RESTAURANT, a call was made to Council.
Council advised that THE PLACE IS WITHIN QUESTION 6. SO PLEASE USE IT IF THAT IS YOUR WISH.
Just check carefully, as the rest of the 'consultation survey' is about the two built options.
Please note that this survey is for anyone who cares, not just the residents of Nightcliff.
The consultation survey is on the main City of Darwin website. Just wait for the Nightcliff Foreshore feature as it roll around onto the screen.
LOCAL PROPOSED MASTERPLAN FOR ENHANCING THE NIGHTCIFF FORESHORE HEADLAND WITHOUT A RESTAURANT
This proposal has been put together by a group of Nightcliff residents calling themselves Friends of Nightcliff. The group includes Simon Scally an architect and Marisa Fontes a landscape architect and other community members.
Like many of us, they do not want a restaurant, but love the Nightcliff foreshore for relaxation. They see this time of focus as the occasion to improve the Nightcliff Headland for the enjoyment of all residents and ratepayers. The greatest urge seems to be for a cafe/coffee shop, rather than a restaurant.
The main suggestion is to improve safety and landscaping on the area and improving the pool infrastructure, modernising it, and tucking a cafe into the end of the refurbished pool building. There would be no 250sm+ $1.5 million+ restaurant on the headland, on the eroding cliffs.. Other costs would need more carefully managed.
A major feature would be the re-routing of the walking/running circuit around to the sea side of the pool, away from Casuarina Drive, and the car parks. This would eliminate clashes between cars and pedestrians.
Here is the Masterplan, with key references shown below on the map. PLan suggests you may wish to vote NO at question 6, on the Council Survey, and instead support some of these ideas for improving the precinct. for everyone. Voting NO leaves the options open.
On the morning of 1 March, 2012, Chief Minister Paul Henderson announced his Greater Darwin PLan for our beautiful tropical city by one of the best natural harbours in the world. It introduces chaos, and leaves residents living in uncertainty.
Largely as a result of having attracted INPEX LNG Plant here, the Northern Territory Government (NTG) expects Darwin to grow at an exponential rate. We have already been experiencing housing shortages, with unaffordable rents and home prices. However, this is not the answer Darwin residents need, or can tolerate.
Our old Darwin Town Plan set the minimum size for the single dwelling (SD) house lot in Darwin at 800 square metres for tropical living.
The NTPS also lists this as a minimum size lot for a house. This size was a step down from earlier minimums of 1000 square metres and 1200 square metres still much sought appreciated in suburbs like Nightcliff.
Most of Darwin was planned in the days of the Commonwealth administration, up to 1978.
The Northern Territory Planning Scheme (NTPS) was introduced in 2007, supposedly to have Territory wide uniform effect. Since that time, it has been amended over 200 times. Its greatest impact has been through through special conditions (SU's) for suburban developers.
New housing in Palmerston was on much smaller lots. than in Darwin. The NTG had become dependent on developers for new suburbs, IT agreed to smaller lots for projects oh more than 50 homes. That later spread to Lyons and now Muirhead.
Planning means planning for appropriate uses in appropriate places and relationships. Needed are areas for various types of residential, commercial, industrial, community uses, such as schools, tertiary education, aged care, hospitals, libraries, museums, community centres, child care centres, youth drop ins, etc., and parks for sport and recreation, and environmental conservation. Infrastructure is essential, and planning must respect land capability constrains such as water supplies and storm surge.
Darwin suburbs each have their own character. People choose the amenity of the place where they purchase or live.
The Henderson Greater Darwin Plan brings home the insecurity thrust this year on rural dwellers, to your own suburb.
We have already seen a series of spot rezonings for multiple dwellings and apartment blocks. Now we face dual occupancy before its ramifications have been thought out.
Your way of life would be destroyed if two or three neighbours go for dual occupancies for profit in this plan, or if there is a deceased estate. Trees and gardens are at risk, as is tropical design, as houses closer together will need airconditioning.
We have already seen rezonings of Community Purposes land for residential projects, as by Charles Darwin University at Palmerston. Exceptional Development Permit (EDP) applications have become the rage, In Conigrave Street, Fannie Bay, the NTG has already approved an EDP for two four bedroom houses side by side on one lot, despite objections.
Strange that Department of Planning staff assert that such changes based on policy, some of which predate actual amendments to the NTPS, will not increase density, nor affect the amenity of particular suburbs, precincts or neighbourhoods.
This is not good planning.
THE COMMUNITY MUST HAVE ITS SAY ON THIS THREAT TO OUR WAY OF DARWIN'S UNIQUE TROPICAL WAY OF LIFE.
For more information, visit our Shop 23 in the Rapid Creek Business Village in Trower Road, Rapid Creek.
We are open Tuesdays and Thursdays 1-5 pm. In addition, we will also be open on Sunday, March 4 and 11 12noon-3pm to discuss these issues.
IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED IN HELPING ORGANISE A PUBLIC MEETING IN THEIR AREA, PLEASE CONTACT US, ASAP.
In unseemly urgency to densify the suburbs of Darwin, the Northern Territory Government wants to undermine rules of the Northern Territory Planning Scheme (NTPS)-again. This time the catchword is 'DUAL OCCUPANCY'
The idea is to amend the rules so t that the Development Consent Authority (DCA) could consent to two houses on any single lot zoned for a SD(Single Dwelling). That is if it is at least 1000 square metres in area. This, it seems, could be ANYWHERE in an ordinary residential suburb. There goes choice and certainty. THIS WOULD BE IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT THE MINIMUM LOT SIZE FOR AN SD LOT IS 800 SQUARE METRES. THIS WOULD MAKE A NONESENSE OF THE NTPS.
Some may welcome the opportunity. However, the impact on the community and its tropical lifestyle could be greatly negative. This is densification of our tropical lifestyle by stealth.
The attachment below contains the details of the proposal - and I feel sure this is a real planning amendment, not a review. HOWEVER YOU ARE INVITED TO COMMENT. THE QUICKEST WAY IS TO SUBMIT A COMMENT IS BY EMAIL (via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.')
Address it to: Strategic Planning, Department of Planning.
Provide your name, address and contact, and list of your reasons against having two houses in each of your neighbour's back yards.
These might include perhaps loss of privacy, loss of gardens, noise, smells,cutting off of shade and breezes, more traffic, and strained infrastructure services.
Then there is possible loss of house values, and perhaps higher council rates because of your lot's new development potential.
Your home ownership may be at risk in the future if you’re the owner of a strata titled unit. See the Unit titles Scheme.
S15 Termination by resolution
A scheme may be terminated if:
the body corporate of the scheme decides to terminate the scheme by a unanimous resolution; or
all of the following conditions are satisfied:
this paragraph applies under the management module;
the scheme has existed for at least 20 years after the commencement of this Act (May 2009)
the body corporate of the scheme decides to terminate the scheme by a resolution prescribed by regulation that is supported by unit owners holding at least 90% of the total interest entitlements.
The Property Council would like to reduce that to 75%. Read more
Here is a handy website to stay on top of what is happening in your area – just put your address in and it will alert you to any planning or development notices within a 2 km radius of your address – http://www.planningalerts.org.au/
In a lull in CBD development a proposal was made by Even Lynn of Gwelo Investments and Hans Vos to develop a huge canal estate from East Point to Coconut Grove. There was a huge organised public reaction against this, until the Chief Minister Paul Henderson announced that because the land involved is crown land the development could not go ahead.
Looking at the tidal mouth of the Ludmilla Creek is seems an unlikely development, which was claimed to be ten times as large as Cullen Bay which has not been without its problems.
Canal estates are banned in NSW and Victoria, and strongly limited in Queensland and WA. They have had major and costly environmental impacts, some of which are not apparent until long after they are built.
They are particularly questionable in times of global warming, stormy weather, sea rise, flooding events, and increased storm surge risk. A recent special Commonwealth report has detailed these negative implications.
Very disappointingly, in proposing the redeveloping of this site, the NT Government mandated that 20% of its area must be used up by residential blocks to pay for the cost of the park. In a compromise response to local consultation, the NT Government will move these proposed residential apartments away from the Lambell Terrace (Larrakeyah) side, where they would have overlooked houses. However, it will not reduce their height. Through public consultation on the draft design, the public opted for a more natural and less costly park, with an easier to maintain design, than the interstate consultants promoted. It was hoped this reduced cost would lower the height and mass of the apartment buildings ‘required’ to cover costs. There are some nice features in the park. The basic design was settled early in 2009, after a report from government appointed local cultural consultant Dr Mickey Dewar.
Historically Flagstaff Park is a distinct area beyond the fence at the end of Myilly Point. This is where the NT Army Commander, and later Mr Justice Blackburn, lived in Flagstaff House, before Cyclone Tracy blew it away in 1974. There remain relics of a large tropical garden with tennis courts and flagpole. It is a beautiful site, with high harbour views and natural breezes.
When the NT Government decided on parkland in the central section of Myilly Point, it threw in Flagstaff Park with the rest, as if it had no special historical significance. Local consultant GHD, provided a layout for on-line public comment. It had a list of numbered features on the plan with a key. Surprisingly, a site for restaurant was, without explanation, mysteriously superimposed. It took the prime landmark viewing site looking towards East Point, and was not included in the GHD numbering.
Flagstaff Park was zoned in the time of the previous government for Tourist Development (B5). Beginning in about 1999, a community group, familiar with the site, worked with PLan to have the area recognised and rezoned as a landmark headland park, for public recreation and picnics. When the ALP won government in 2001, Chief Minister Clare Martin fulfilled an ALP election promise, publicly announcing that the park was saved from tourist development. She announced the return of this park to the people. Flagstaff Park was then rezoned as public open space.
PLan waited patiently through years of delays between the government and Darwin City Council about who should pay for and manage this neglected park for the People.
It is outrageous, in the face of the ALP government’s election promise, that any attempt is made to superimpose a large restaurant site on the park, by business interests. A promise is a promise! This would change the prime usage of the park back to tourism, with traffic making it unsafe for children. The restaurant could easily be located, as we have suggested, with equally good views to East Point, in the middle section of the Myilly Point park.
So frequently PLan, now in its sixteenth year, finds previously made promises and public expectations are being ignored or eroded.
Our valued volunteers man the office Thursday afternoon between 1pm and 5.30pm. We are located at 8/1 Buffalo Court, Darwin.
Contact
Post: GPO Box 2513, Darwin, NT, 0801
Phone: 08 8927 1999
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Nightcliff ForeshoreCafe/Restaurant
Nightcliff Pool Precinct Masterplan