Palm Beach not the place for outrageous highrise facility

I LOVE Palm Beach. I loved it as a kid in the fifties when we holidayed in one of the beachside fibro “shacks”.

I still loved it when we retired around 2001 and bought our “dream”, a unit on the beachfront. I love watching the boats on the reef, the surfboard riders who appear as the sun comes out of the sea and the nippers who gather on the beach on Sundays.

I love the sunrises and the clear sunsets, the pristine beaches and the mountains. I love Mt Warning that appears in the sunlight and disappears as the storm clouds swirl around the mountains and towards the beach.

What I definitely don’t love is the way the development rules on the Gold Coast can change. We are told that the new town plan (2016) designates the Palm Beach Coastal Area as being suitable for “medium density residential” and sets the height of new buildings on the coastal strip as being a maximum of 29 meters. This is about 2 or 3 floors higher than the former 7 floor limit.

Unfortunately, an increase in height is never enough for some people. A development plan as reported in Thursday’s Bulletin has just appeared on the council website re a proposal for a “high care aged facility” to go on the vacant residential blocks north of the Pacific Surf Club.

Regis, a large Melbournebased, listed company who specialise in aged care, proposes to put a very large development on this site which is zoned “residential”.

To do this they first need approval from the council for “a material change of use” for this land. The development plans show the proposed structure is intrusive and massive, being between 39 and 42 metres in height, taking up the maximum area of the block and stretching down as close as possible to the beachfront.

It blocks out our building which is adjacent to the north and overshadows the beach and adjacent Pacific Surf Club to the south. It is clearly outside the guidelines as set in 2016 including that it is not regarded as being “residential”. Some 177 high care beds are proposed for the site. Regulations set the number at 100 for this surface area.

It is fair to reason that the bigger and the higher the building is, and the more beds it has available, then the greater will be the income and return on investment and the greater will be the parking and traffic concerns for locals and the less it will be compatible with the “style” of Palm Beach.

We appeal to the council to listen to the public and refuse this development application as it is totally outside the future planning for Palm Beach and the current nature of local buildings in the area which are designed “residential” for residents and tenants.

Will the council really listen? Is this what we, the locals, want?

If your answer to this type of development is “No!” then don’t sit back and let a precedent be set.

Oppose this new development by a submission to council against this application and help preserve the unique nature of Palm Beach.

The application will go public at a future date this year, possibly quite soon.

See us on face book for further information at “savepalmbeachqld”.