Planning report

                                                                                                proposal report



4.0 Proposed development details
The Vipassana Centre Queensland is a non-profit charity that teaches the technique of Vipassana
mediation to achieve peace of mind. The Centre currently offers 22 x 10 day courses, 1 x 20 day or
30 day courses and 5 to 6 x1 day to 3 day courses over the year. Each year approximately 1730
students attend the courses with approximately 5000 requests for courses processed. Due to
increasing demand, the Centre now seeks to increase the number of students it can accommodate
and seeks to change the existing approval on the site and extend the Educational Establishment
as follows:

      New male student accommodation – 28 persons
      New female student accommodation – 25 persons
      New servers accommodation building – 20 persons
      New teachers accommodation building – 2 persons
      Extension to meditation hall. Squaring of existing octagonal building with minor extension to
        floor area.
      Extension to single meditation hall. New internal ring of meditation rooms within existing
        structure
      New Mini Hall - meditation hall to cater for bilingual courses
      Office upgrade and small meditation hall for local old students (off compound meditation
        hall)
      Additional carparking
      Additional water tanks

The changes to the approval will result in a maximum population of 129 persons for the site as
detailed in the table below.


Accommodation Type                                          Existing Development   Proposed Change      Total

Male student accommodation                                  25                     28                   53
Female student accommodation                                27                     25                   52
Servers accommodation                                       nil                    20                   20
Teachers accommodation                                       2                      2                    4

Total                                                       54                     75                   129

Attachment D provides an explanation of the centre prepared by the applicant.

The proposed new works have been designed to complement the style of the existing centre and
have been located in and adjacent to existing buildings on site to minimise impacts on surrounding
vegetation. The new accommodation buildings are single storied with an austere design that
reinforces the meditation teachings with the extensions to the meditation halls reflecting the
existing design on site.

The centre is very quiet with limited noise generated by classes and meditation.

Attachment E provides proposal plans of the changes sought with table 3 below outlining a
summary of the development.




        martoo consulting
        town planners + urban designers + development managers                                        page 10 of 18