2014-03-25 Planning & Organisation Committee Agenda Pages 81-167

PLANNING & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                 25 MARCH 2014


8    INFRASTRUCTURE CHARGES
If Council were to approve the development, the applicant will be required to pay infrastructure
charges for trunk infrastructure within each local government area. The charges are estimated at
$15.4M for Precincts 1 and 2 payable to the Sunshine Coast Council (including $7.5M of
Unitywater charges) and $13.0M million payable to Noosa Council (including $4.7M of Unitywater
charges).

The following networks would be applicable under the Adopted Infrastructure Charges regime:
    Water & Sewerage
    Transport
    Public Parks and Land for Community Facilities
    Stormwater (residential)

The proposed development area lies outside the Priority Infrastructure Area and has not been
included in current infrastructure planning for either the Noosa or Sunshine Coast Councils.
Infrastructure impacts and upgrades necessary to service the development are yet to be
quantified by both Councils and Unitywater.
9    CONCLUSION
The applicant has sought to design an integrated community title development and invested
significant time and resources in an effort to provide a suitably detailed proposal and respond to
Council requests for information. The application and its assessment have raised complex
environmental, planning and urban design considerations. The assessment identifies a raft of
conflicts and concerns but the proposal is not without merit. Noosa on Weyba poses a number of
positive aspects, including:
    the design and setting of the estates have the potential to provide desirable residential
     products likely to be well received by the market place and sell well;
    the layout of the precincts and access to open space areas would afford good opportunities
     for active and passive recreation for residents;
    elements of the proposed integrated water management strategy and sustainability
     measures would advance some associated Council strategies;
    the tiered community title approach provides potential to entrench environmental
     management and sustainability measures beyond that of standard residential development;
     and
    the scale of the development would generate significant economic activity having flow on
     employment and commercial benefits.

By far the most significant benefit of the development though is considered to be the dedication
of the BDOA send sites to expand the Noosa National Park. The transfer of this environmentally
and culturally significant land to public ownership is desirable and would provide community
benefits.

Part of the premise for BDOA agreements is that development is transferred from
environmentally significant land to more suitable sites to protect it from the risk of development.
In this case though, the concept of transferring development rights is abandoned and a major
urban development that will expand Noosa’s urban footprint is proposed.

The site and its environs have significant environmental, natural resource and open space values
and constraints and is also known to be of Aboriginal cultural heritage significance. The land use
approaches of The Noosa Plan and Maroochy Plan 2000 respond to these values by specifically
avoiding urban development. This is considered appropriate, given the impacts associated with
urban development, even where it incorporates best practices. Noosa on Weyba fundamentally
conflicts with the planning intent of both local planning schemes.

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