Residents of Dural and Round Corner recently attended a public meeting where a Planning Proposal to spot rezone the semi-rural Round Corner shopping village and turn it into a town centre, was shown by developers.
The Planning Proposal, which is soon to be lodged with the Hills Shire Council, includes towers up to 18 storeys high containing 175 apartments, plus 57 seniors living units and 12 townhouses. A total of almost 250 new dwellings on the current Round Corner shopping village site.
Also included would be a medical centre, childcare centre, community hub, a shopping centre and 1,500 car spaces.
The overwhelming response from the audience was that residents did not support putting such a massive development on this site.
Residents main concern was traffic, with a rural road system that does not cope with the current traffic congestion, let alone adding such intense development on one site.
Residents pointed out that the South Dural Planning Proposal and the more recent Derriwong Rd, Dural proposal were both rejected because of the lack of road infrastructure. The then NSW Government wanted the South Dural developers to contribute to the surrounding road infrastructure which they refused to do.
It is understood that the proponents of the Round Corner Town Centre Planning Proposal are only offering to provide four on-site entry/exit driveways but not contribute to the wider road infrastructure.
Other significant concerns raised by residents at the public meeting were overdevelopment of the site, height of the towers, the urban centre being out of character with the surrounding rural area, visual impact, loss of local shops and access difficulties.
While the developers suggested that if the town centre was built the NSW Government would be more likely to provide road funding, ‘build it and they will come’, residents were sceptical this would occur within any reasonable timeframe. The costs to widen Old Northern Road and New Line Road are prohibitive and no state government has been willing to fully fund them.
Better Planning Network considers spot rezoning results in uncontrolled development being built without any type of supporting infrastructure, where local amenity is sacrificed for a few more dwellings and large developer profits.
The urbanisation of rural areas is supposed to be quarantined to the North-West and South-West growth areas, not spread willy-nilly across the whole Greater Sydney basin. That is exactly why we now have the Transport Oriented Development Program and the Low- and Mid-Rise Housing Policy, to contain urban sprawl. Developers cannot have it both ways.
