2021-01-27 Special Meeting Agenda

SPECIAL MEETING AGENDA                                                           27 JANUARY 2021


Car parking
The planning scheme does not prescribe a car parking rate for a playground. Accordingly, in
support of the application the applicant provided a peak parkland demand assessment and a traffic
report prepared by an external traffic consultant.
The traffic report has adopted a conservative approach and generally assumed that parking
demands generated by the proposed new park facilities would all need to be satisfied by new
parking areas and not rely on the use of the existing parking opportunities.
To determine the likely car parking demand for the playground, other local councils were contacted
to learn from their experience and a survey of car parking provided for similar-sized playground
developments were reviewed including:
     Forest Green playground, Pimpama (Gainsborough Green development by Mirvac)
     The Heights park, Pimpama (The Heights land development by Sunland)
     Splash ‘n’ Play playground, South Ripley (Providence Estate development by Simonds)
     Bob Gamble park, Ipswich (Ipswich City Council and State Government)
     Hidden World playground, Fitzgibbon (Brisbane City Council)
     Skippy Park, Landsborough (Sunshine Coast Regional Council)
     Burnett Park and Bicycle Park, Caloundra South (Aura land development by Stockland)
      Brightwater Park, Brightwater (Brightwater land development by Stockland
     Frew Park, Milton (Brisbane City Council)
     Rocks Riverside Park, Seventeen Mile Rocks (Brisbane City Council)
     South Bank and Roma Street Parkland playgrounds (South Bank Corporation and State
      Government, managed by Brisbane City Council)
Based on this review the external traffic consultant concluded that the provision of 56 additional
car parking spaces would likely be sufficient to cater for additional car parking demands generated
by users of the playground.
However, the external traffic consultant also noted that:
    ……..the provision of 56 additional parking spaces would potentially be excessive in practice,
    and lead to a waste of scarce Council resources. For example, it may well be the case that the
    provision of the 12 additional parking spaces in Maple Street together with the 22 additional
    spaces opposite the existing community building parking area off Lower Mill Road could prove
    to be sufficient to satisfactorily accommodate peak parking demands in a typical week.
    A recommended compromise to address the above issues would be to fully construct the new
    parking areas in Maple Street (12 spaces) and the additional spaces opposite the existing
    community building parking area off Lower Mill Road (22 additional spaces), and to construct
    the other new parking area proposed on the southern side of Mary River Road, west of the
    tennis courts (22 spaces) as an overflow parking area. This would be in conjunction with a
    requirement that use of the overflow parking area be monitored for a full week in school holidays
    and a full week outside of school holidays after the playground has been fully operational for
    three months (and again at six months), and for the overflow parking area be formally sealed
    and line-marked if regular use is identified at either period of monitoring. Funds should be set
    aside in the Council budget to complete those works, but if the monitoring indicates that
    formalisation of the carpark is not necessary, then those funds could then be used for other
    more worthy purposes.
The traffic report also acknowledges that there is potential for conflict between users of the
playground and patrons of the library with regards to the use of the existing library car park within
Marara Street. It is noted that there are 9 existing parking spaces, including 2 disabled parking
spaces, on the southern side of Marara Street fronting the library building. There are no time
restrictions on the disabled parking spaces, and there is a 2 hour limit on the remaining 7 spaces.

                                                                                      Page 17 of 41