That’s Not a Strata Scheme … According to the NSW Planning Court

In Hillsdale, Sydney there’s a 30 year old block of apartments and house on a large (5636 sqm) block of land which is ripe for redevelopment.

Although the Botany Bay City Council approved development of the site in 2009 into a new 76 apartment complex with basement parking, the owner applied for approval of a smaller scale development. 

The new development involved upgrading the existing building, splitting the house into two dwellings, re-organising the car park to create 34 resident parking spaces and 4 visitors spaces, and a variety of associated building improvements.  This development would increase the site density from 33 dwellings to 34 and add 6 car parking spaces.

But, the Council would not approve it.  Arguing that to allow redevelopment of the site into only 34 dwellings when it could be 76 preserved an obsolete building, prevented it from achieving it’s strategic plans for higher density in that area and (as a strata scheme) it restricted the opportunities for future development of the site.

The Court agreed saying that the strata subdivision into 34 strata lots will virtually permanently remove the site from prospects of redevelopment and that development was both inconsistent and antipathetic to the requirements of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (NSW) 1979 in relation to “the orderly and economic use and development of land”.

It’s also an interesting case because unusually the Council wanted more development on the site than the owner.

This case reference is Marana Developments v Botany Bay City Council [2010] NSWLEC 1237 decided by the NSW Land & Environment Court, 3 September 2010 and you can find it here.

I’ve also prepared another Casewatch on this important decision which you can read at my professional website here.  Casewatch is an easy to understand summary of the more important strata cases in Australia.

Francesco …