Weston AFP $30m development site goes back to the drawing board

Despite lengthy legal and technical submissions by Village to support its appeal, chief executive Travis Doherty said that he had accepted the umpire's decision and would now go back to the drawing board.

This would likely postpone development on the terraced six-hectare site, bought for a bargain $32 million four years ago, for a further four years.

"We remain committed to the site; the [ACAT] decision was made and we will work with it," Mr Doherty said.

"We are already working on various plans; we will re-commence our engagement with the planning authorities and we'll certainly re-engage with the community and try to keep as many of the trees on the site as possible," he said.

Preserving the established trees on the site and traffic congestion were two key sticking points for the Weston Community Council, which said that the proposed plan would not be in keeping with the character of the suburb.

Bill Gemmell, the council's interim chairman, said that ACAT's decision to turn down the appeal was a victory for "common sense" and supported the voices of the local community.

"The development proposed was out of character with the community which surrounded it; the look and feel of the local area," he said.

"We were never opposed to the development; it was about making it fit in with what is already there.

"From day one there didn't even appear there would be enough parking; even the garbage trucks would have struggled to get in.

"From a traffic perspective, it's already a busy part of Weston and the way that access to the site was proposed, this [proposal] would have just ramped up the congestion even more."

Heysen St is already seen as a local "rat run" to avoid traffic which builds up during peak hour on John Gorton Drive, now bulked to capacity by commuters from the growing outer suburbs of Wright, Coombs and Denman Prospect.

The development site had been occupied by the Australian Federal Police Training College from 1980 until 2016 when it was sold to the now de-registered company NEB Holdings.

In November 2017, NEB Holdings on-sold the site to Village for $32.21 million, a bargain price by today's standards.

Less than a year later, plans were revealed to develop 126 single dwelling blocks around the perimeter of the site infilled with seven banks of townhouse blocks in seven parallel rows, 258 in all, in the middle of the site.

Each bank of townhouses would have between 13 and 17 single dwellings.

Land in the vicinity of the site is predominantly zoned RZ1 (suburban zone). Nearby are two school campuses and Fetherston Gardens, a public park which was previously part of the School of Horticulture in the Canberra Institute of Technology.

In October 2019, the ACT Planning and Land Authority expressed its disquiet by referring the development application to a number of other parties including Access Canberra, the Environment, the Planning and Sustainable Development directorate, Transport Canberra and City Services, and the Conservator of Flora and Fauna.

None of them supported the application.

Strong objection came from the Conservator, which did not support the removal of 68 gum trees regulated under the Tree Act.

The Weston Community Council objected to the "row upon row of parallel townhouses", a point agreed to by ACAT in its finding in which it stated "the proposed development consists mostly of narrow-front compact blocks in parallel rows dominated by almost continuous paving and carparking".

Like the Conservator, the council also held grave concerns for the removal of the established trees, most of which were over 30 years old.

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"These are the lungs of our city," Mr Gemmell said.

When the development was knocked back, Village applied for a review, asking for new rules and criteria to be added to the Weston Precinct Code which would then permit the development to go ahead.

However, ACAT again backed the community council, ruling that "there was no real attempt [by the developer] to engage with the substantive reasons for why others objected to the proposal or why it was refused".

Mr Doherty said that the way in which the dynamic of the Canberra residential market had moved in the past three years offered Village a chance to "reassess to create more open spaces on the site, and that would likely lead us to a balance of townhouses and apartments".

"I think we will be striving for a similar number of homes on the site but far more open space, and preservation of trees," he said.

"The advice we had [at the time] was that we were compliant [with the Territory Plan] and we knew there was a strong market demand emerging for architecturally designed townhouses.

"As we look forward now, there's still that opportunity to put to the market architecturally designed townhouses, as well as single-level living with good space and amenity for downsizers."

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