Council power to curb city towers

SIGNIFICANT restrictions on potential city skyscrapers and added criteria on “city-changing” developments will be considered by the Hobart City Council.

As debate rages over plans for a 120m Fragrance Hotel in the CBD, the council’s planning committee last night considered a landmark report on height limits and town and streetscape planning criteria by local architect and urban design consultant Leigh Woolley.

It listed several recommendations that could have strong implications on city development, including:

RESTRICT the height of future buildings to no more than 75m.

MAINTAIN the city centre as compact with no “individually prominent” developments.

The committee overwhelmingly endorsed the report and agreed to start the proposed amendments to the planning scheme via the Tasmanian Planning Commission and to hold a public forum to explain the changes.

The recommendations go to the full council next Monday.

City planning director Neil Noye said he was concerned the council did not have such criteria in place.

“The purpose of this report was to strength the controls and [give] guidance for performance criteria … that council was looking for when dealing with the Palace Hotel,” Mr Noye said.

The Palace Hotel development, now known as the Hyatt Centric Hotel, in the Elizabeth Bus Mall was approved last year after 10m in height was removed from the original 73m plan to gain council approval.

Mr Woolley told the committee his report was much broader than just the height considerations.

“There’s a considerable need at the moment to actually get townscape values identified within the scheme and then what that means spatially may become a matter of further discussion,” he said.

Alderman Eva Ruzicka said more than one public forum could be held to explain the proposed changes if necessary.

“My real concern is we are facing some city-changing applications and I want the tools to be able to deal with them,” Ald Ruzicka said.

Ald Anna Reynolds, who voted against the motion, said she was concerned the proposed 75m height limit would become a default limit.

“This is too important to not get right,” she said.

“What concerns me is we’re introducing a whole menu of additional performance criteria some of which are really hard to define — some of the items are quite subjective I think.”

The council has been under pressure to rethink height limits in the CBD as debate rages about how to accommodate new buildings while maintain- ing Hobart’s heritage character.

The council has received applications for projects that exceed the height limits, most notably two hotel proposals from Singaporean developers the Fragrance Group at 120m and 75m in height.

The height limit for the central business zone is about 45m under the current interim planning scheme, but a proposed building with a height over the limit can still be approved if it meets certain criteria.

Earlier this month, a briefing from Mr Woolley was provided to the city’s Urban Design Advisory Panel, which found “council should seriously consider applying an absolute maximum upper height limit in the Central Business Zone and in adjacent zones to ensure that there is a transition in height from the CBD”.