Letter From FOPP President, Drew Morrow
Posted: 30/03/2006
You may have seen the article about the Water Police Site park in Tuesday's Herald. It alludes to a Master Plan that has already been on public exhibition and which has gained an 80% approval rating from the community. It also alludes to the inclusion in the Plan of an 8 storey tower to be built on the corner of Pirrama Road and Harris Street.
Let me assure you that the Master Plan for the site has not yet been released for public exhibition. The claims in the article about overwhelming community support attributed to a spokesperson for the Lord Mayor are, therefore, nonsense. Someone, at either the Herald's or Lord Mayor's office has their stats mixed up with the community approval of the "Shorelines" Design Idea "A" at the last community workshop. It was that particular concept that received 80% of the community's support, not the Master Plan!
The Master Plan comes up for consideration by the Council's Environment & Heritage Committee on next Monday at around 4:30pm. The agenda, meeting papers and the Master Plan is now available on the Council's website. The Master Plan drawing does include the residential tower on the block adjoining the public housing on the corner of Harris Street and Pirrama Road as alluded to in the SMH article. To the best of our knowledge, that piece of land forms part of the Water Police site. Therefore, the Plan includes a residential/commercial tower on the site which is public land. In fact, it stands on the same spot that SHFA was proposing to build its 14 storey tower that formed part of the residential development that all of us in the community fought so hard to overturn.
As you will recall from the community workshops, virtually nobody was in favour of building structures on the site of any type, much less an 8 storey tower.
Your Executive Committee has already started to plan a strategy to ensure that we have this proposal overturned. Our first big opportunity to influence the process will come on Monday afternoon at the Committee Meeting. We already have an expert examining the Master Plan and anticipate that we will have many convincing arguments to have the Plan altered to put before the Committee on Monday.
As a member you can play your part by attending next Monday afternoon's Environment and Heritage Committee Meeting at the Town Hall As mentioned above, that meeting should commence around 4:30pm. The Master Plan will then be going before the full Council Meeting the following Monday, 10 April 2006. We will have our bibs and maybe a banner or two. We should not try to disrupt the proceedings and we will be aiming to show the Council our strength in numbers and our determination to ensure that what happens on the site accords with the community's wishes. I hope that you might be able to make it.
In the meantime I have written to Clover Moore about the matter and enclose a copy of my letter to her for your information.
Regards,
Drew Morrow
President
