Residents of Forum apartments call for consultation to be extended for Geocon's 70 Allara Street development in Canberra CBD

A community consultation process is under way for the 70 Allara Street project before a works approval is lodged with the National Capital Authority.

However residents and owners of the neighbouring Forum apartments have called for the consultation period to be extended to ensure they have sufficient time to view the designs and provide informed comments.

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Purdon Planning, which is leading the consultation on behalf of Geocon, scheduled two community consultations, one on December 15, 2021 and the other on January 20, 2022.

Canberra consultant Tania Parkes has been engaged by the Forum Owners Corporation to respond to the proposal.

She said owners of the 117-apartment complex have received insufficient material in order to provide feedback on possible factors such as traffic, overshadowing, views or privacy.

"This is all within the Christmas/new year period, which is not very helpful for consultation and especially because they haven't been provided with any studies on traffic or view corridors or overshadowing or any of that information," she said.

"At the first consultation we asked for the studies and we asked for sufficient time for consultation and they haven't got back to us as of [Friday] morning."

Ms Parkes said the residents were aware the site would likely be developed, however they expected a more thorough consultation process when it happened.

"They've always known that there would be some sort of development on that site but this is much larger than they had anticipated and has the potential to overshadow their building and their apartments on two of the four sides of the development," she said.

Ms Parkes said the residents also held concerns around the "extremely high volume" of traffic that would use the new driveway, which is in close proximity to the Forum entrance.

".. but we haven't seen any traffic studies," she said.

Nick Georgalis, founder and managing director of Geocon, said the development will bring "much needed housing stock to Canberra city".

"As is the case in any development, issues like shadowing and traffic will form our DA submission to be approved by the relevant authorities, in the case the NCA," he said.

Ms Parkes said the residents "just want to be able to provide informed comment".

"There's always room for negotiation and improvement but if there's no proper, genuine conversation, I'm not sure how that can happen," she said.

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