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New Developers Off and Running
Plans reveal 194 units, shops, new street
The Anka Property Group, new owners of the Carrier/Multiplex site, are certainly wasting no time. Following their pre-Xmas briefing to CARz and other local groups, they have moved swiftly to more detailed plans and possibilities.
They seem determined to include the Rozelle community at each stage of their thinking, which is brave and courteous of them, and a major advance on Multiplex (R.I.P.) and the Tigers. Anka have now prepared a two-page summary of their ideas and a preliminary map/illustration for the next Rozelle/Iron Cove Precinct Meeting — Monday 8 February, 7 pm, Balmain Shores Meeting Room, Margaret Street.
And they have accepted an invitation to attend the following Precinct Meeting to present the whole scheme and answer questions. That’s on Monday 8 March, please make a note. All this is before they submit any Development Application to Council. We salute their openness.
Here’s the highly-preliminary illustration from Sydney architects Turner & Associates, with some CARz notes:
1. A new street – generally known as New Street — almost joins Margaret and Merton Streets. If Kennards and the duplex next door on Wellington Street weren’t there, New Street would be a thoroughfare, not a dead end.
2. The various buildings have a variety of storeys, as indicated. Along Terry Street the heights vary between two, three and four storeys. Along New Street the blocks vary from four, six, seven and eight storeys.
3. The development is on the former Carrier site only. This time Kennards are not playing ball (see Note 1). In fact, the owners of the Kennards site recently submitted their own DA for large renovations requiring a new floor space ratio of 2.8:1. They plan to block the end of New Street permanently.
4. There are to be 194 dwellings (apartments and maisonettes).
5. There are two basement floors of car parking, with three entrance/exits, all off Terry Street — a. at the lower left end of the development, b. at the top end (just down from the roundabout), and c. under the main blocks along New Street.
6. The bottom left hand block, fronting the Terry Street hill and New Street, features 1660 square metres of ‘neighbourhood retailing’.
7. There are plans to include a 40-place Child Care Centre, entry from New Street.
![](http://rozelle.e-newsletter.com.au/media/dynamic/id/45c3a6484fcca694ea96b322eae19bf2fb6aa295/interface.gif\") ![](http://rozelle.e-newsletter.com.au/media/dynamic/id/45c3a6484fcca694ea963e7a141bed93239fb3f8/interface.gif\") |
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Contamination Strikes Again
It’s 5 times worse than expected, says Anka,
so we have to build BIGGER!
At the pre-Xmas community meeting Andrew Boyarsky, Managing Director of Anka, told us there was 2 million dollars worth of remediation to be done on their newly acquired site. If Multiplex (R.I.P.) knew this figure, they certainly kept it to themselves.
After more investigation, more boreholes, Andrew came to the January meeting with even worse news. The cost of decontamination had risen to $10 million.
This means, he said, they would have to fit in more residential units to recover their increased outlay. The 1.5:1 Floor Space Ratio agreed between Leichhardt Council and the community as a result of the two big town hall meetings in 2009 would now have to be increased to 1.7:1.
And, in turn, this meant that the previously agreed maximum storey levels would have to be increased – from six storeys to eight.
But if Councillors give Anka the nod to expand to eight storeys and 1.7:1, the same will have to apply to the whole area bounded by Terry Street, Wellington Street and Victoria Road. It all has to be officially rezoned before Anka can begin work.
So that’s 13-storeys (plus an eight and a six) one side of Victoria Road and 8-storeys (plus a seven and a six) on the other. Chatswood looms.
How will under-siege Terry Street and Wellington Street cope with 146 new units at the TigerFarm and 194 new units on AnkaLand?
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How Low Can They Go?
Massive Tigers Scheme has 6 floors of parking
The true extent of the Tigers DA was revealed at the two recent Town Hall community meetings (Leichhardt and Balmain). The infuriating ugliness of the 13 storey towers is something to behold. Rozelle will never be the same again.
Also breathtaking is the cross-section diagram of the planned six levels of car parking. 13 floors up and 6 floors down!
Anka is putting a figure of $10 million to decontaminate their site for two-level underground parking, so how much will decontamination cost the Tigers? And how many millions will be needed to dig down through six storeys of rock?
We know nothing about such things, so we asked a friendly builder with plenty of similar experience. Here’s what he told us:
“The deeper you go the longer it takes to dig and the more material that has to be removed. Also the deeper you go the more complicated the hole becomes. You can encounter differing materials and the shoring becomes much more heavily engineered on bounded sites. In essence it takes a lot more time and a lot more money. Often deep holes in urban infill locations are prohibitively expensive and that factor alone kills the economics of many projects.”
Obviously Benny Elias’s Rozelle Village Pty Ltd has truckloads of cash at his disposal – to decontaminate, to dig deep urban holes, and to build his Great Towers of Ugliness.
Or perhaps he just wants the DA approved so he can then sell on to someone with even deeper pockets.
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Balmain Comes to Rozelle
What’s in a Last-Minute Name Change?
 Local residents received a shiny leaflet in their post-Xmas letterboxes, as long as they weren’t showing a NO JUNK MAIL sticker.
Extremely reminiscent of the awful ‘Lifestyle Solution’ leaflet once delivered by Multiplex (R.I.P.), this one concerns the DA “lodged by Rozelle Village Pty Ltd in partnership with the Balmain Leagues Club”.
But the development pictured in squiggly illustrations accompanied by happy family snaps isn’t called Rozelle Village anymore. It has become - wouldn’t you know it! - Balmain Village. Obviously penthouse units on the 13th floor will sell better if buyers think they will be living in Balmain, not Rozelle.
The change was obviously done at the last minute. Inside the leaflet there is an uncorrected mention of ‘Rozelle Village’.
The guff on the front cover says: ‘BALMAIN VILLAGE is a proposed new development... designed with the community in mind.’ Yeah, right. Shame they don’t know which community they are in.
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