"Our Liveable Places Centres Strategy" document comes to Council

Waverley Council's Strategic Planning & Development Committee will tonight consider the revised Villages plan, now called "Our Livable Places". Here's a link to the Bondi Road section.

The new strategy is a lot better than the previous one. Council has heard our message about keeping Bondi Road at a human scale. According to the executive summary, "the Strategy seeks to achieve three key outcomes:

• To identify, protect and enhance character.
• To ensure the ongoing resilience of our urban areas and community.
• To protect the role of centres to be able to support our community."

The proposed zoning has been reduced from B4 (mixed use) to B2 (local centre), and there is a commitment to keeping active street frontage as a local shopping and services strip. It's still possible that redevelopment could increase building heights, but the two storey streetscape and heritage would need to be retained.

There will be more consultation on aspects of the implementation:

1. An appropriate planning mechanism to support the retention of essential urban services throughout the local government area, including automobile services (mechanics, petrol stations, etc) as well as some larger format retailers (storage, hardware, etc).
2. A maximum floor space for supermarkets across all centres to ensure such a development would be compatible with the role and function of the centre and its place in the retail hierarchy.
3. The appropriate quantum of car parking for the success of centres.
4. A mechanism to encourage diversity of goods and service offerings in centres identified as Resilience Network Centres (RNC).
5. A scheme for historic façade upgrades in centres such as Bondi Road and Charing Cross.
6. Prepare a design manual for shopfronts, materials and signage in identified centres to be included in the Waverley Development Control Plan.

We'll keep you posted on future developments...