Dear supporters,

 

It has been an interesting month and we thought it was time for an update...

 

What we do know: The Sydenham to Bankstown Corridor Strategy – that planned to impose on Marrickville large-scale rezonings for high and medium density apartments – has been shelved. Instead, planning controls have been handed back to the Inner West Council and Canterbury-Bankstown Council. All the campaigning, signing petitions and writing submissions was worth it!! Thank you for all your support, it would not have happened if Marrickville had not stood up to the NSW State government.

 

Well, what happens now? Planning and zoning for the Inner West, including Marrickville, will now be achieved through a new Local Environment Plan (LEP). The last LEP was created for the Marrickville LGA in 2015. A process to work towards the new LEP for the amalgamated Inner West Council area will now begin. On August 14th, Inner West Council voted to accept an offer from the NSW Government Department of Planning and Environment to receive extra funding ($2.5 million) on the condition that the LEP is completed by 30 June 2020.

The NSW State government still intends for the Inner West LGA to densify and meet housing targets. The current housing target for the whole Inner West Council in the Greater Sydney Commission’s Eastern City District Plan is 5900 dwellings for the five year period ending 2021. Read the Plan here.

In effect, this means an accelerated LEP process, with the pressure still on Inner West Council to densify to housing targets set by the NSW Government. Inner West Council is busy recruiting planners ahead of the new LEP, but we do not yet know what their exact process will look like, what principles will underpin it, or what assumptions council will bring to the table. Council has assured Save Marrickville that community-led participation is critical to the LEP process so we will all have some exciting work to do in the next phase.

So, what has happened to the Carrington Rd proposal?: Many people have seen the Facebook posts from our councillors declaring that the shelving of the Sydenham-Bankstown strategy also means the death of Mirvac’s Carrington Rd proposal. Sadly, we are not so confident. In our conversations with Mirvac/landowners they have told us they still plan to move forward with their rezoning proposal. We have been informed they plan to hold public meetings about their proposal. Any event information we receive will be posted on our Facebook page so that all community members can ask their own questions of the developers. In the meantime, please don't take down your posters.

 

Is the Metro still going ahead? Clarification is still being sought about how the shelving of the Sydenham-Bankstown corridor strategy affects the Metro. Once the Metro is approved and contracts signed (we don’t know when this will be) it will be impossible to stop its construction. The GSC still appears to have an overall strategy to promote development around transport hubs so it is likely that the construction of the Metro will place development/rezoning pressure around station precincts. This is a ‘watch this space’ issue, you can read more about the Metro on the Sydenham to Bankstown Alliance website here.

 

Is Save Marrickville doing anything about the Victoria Road Precinct? To date, we have not had the resources to fully get to grips with the machinations of the VRP (if anyone wants to volunteer for this job, please let us know). However, we are always willing to share information about the VRP on our Facebook page and website. During the week we were informed that council (not unanimously) approved the Development Control Plan for the VRP against the advice of council staff. You can read the report (item 14) in the agenda here and you can also read the statement from council explaining the decision here.

 

Some heritage news: We are waiting to find out what will happen with our proposed State heritage listing of Carrington Road. Based on a review of around 25 major factory buildings in Sydney from the 1930s, just a few remain. Carrington Road's historic factories are the only ones still used for manufacturing. You can catch up on our Carrington Rd heritage installments here.

 

 

P.S. If you missed the launch of the Marrickville Character Study you can view it here and we might even have some copies to giveaway if you private message us on our Facebook page.

P.P.S. If you haven't done so already, have a listen to ‘Field Trip’, a podcast about a walking tour on Carrington Road by Front Yards Projects.