A MAJORITY vote by Newcastle City Council to attempt to stop development of a 26 hectare site at 505 Minmi Road, Fletcher - against the advice of council staff and at odds with the council's prior designation of it as a housing area - throws a spotlight on some of the major issues confronting councils and other planning bodies as they try to balance the growing importance of environmental considerations against the imperative of housing an increasing population.
The decision by the Labor-Green majority to abandon the recommended course of action, and to substitute an alternate motion that forces the site owner into further "costly" - the council's own words - reports, while urging the NSW Minister for the Environment, Matt Kean, to have the area made a National Park, is being led, publicly, by Deputy Mayor Declan Clausen.
In the Newcastle Herald today, Cr Clausen describes the site as a "critical part" of the Green Corridor - the name given to a 23,000-hectare arc of undeveloped land stretching inland from the Stockton Bight, west and south to the Watagan Mountains.
GREEN CORRIDOR FILE:
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- Green Corridor reaches 23,000 hectares
- Major housing estate planned as Coal and Allied puts land for 3000 houses on market
- Green Corridor campaign wins National Trust award
- Cessnock council Green Corridor quandry
- Coal and Allied hands over Tank Paddock and other Green Corridor sites
Maryland resident Brian Purdue, a driving force in the creation of the corridor, describes the site as "extremely valuable to the project". This might be closer to the point.
On the general argument of "more is better", the corridor's supporters would no doubt like the site added to the cause.
But as our aerial photo indicates, there is an argument to say the site has as much in common with the housing estates of Fletcher and Maryland to its east, as it does with the bulk of the corridor land to its west.
Council papers show this is the fourth attempt since 2009 to have the site rezoned.
They show the council favoured rezoning in December 2012 (when businessman Jeff McCloy was lord mayor) but voted against it in December 2015 (when Labor assumed its existing majority).
A new application was lodged in 2017. This amended version, submitted in September, had been prepared, in the council's words, "to "address the issues" that the council's own "independent external consultant" had raised back in 2018.
Property development, and the zoning of land to enable it, is not an exact science.
But the council has to balance its environmental heart with a head for housing its burgeoning population.
This is unlikely to be the last we will hear of 505 Minmi Road, Fletcher.
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