The Yarralumla Residents Association will present a petition with 4000 signatures next week calling on the ACT government to withdraw and rework contentious plans for redeveloping land around the Canberra Brickworks.
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The association is also going to the appeals tribunal in a fresh attempt to see a consultants report which, according to the government, found independent private sector investment in the adaptive reuse of the Brickworks is unlikely to be viable.
A hearing is set down for August.
The association says the population density after redevelopment would be 10 times that of Belconnen Town Centre and will more than double the population of Yarralumla from 2922 to 6762.
The government released its latest redevelopment plan in May, proposing housing on 42 hectares and a population of 4000. On Wednesday, a spokesman for Minister for Economic Development Andrew Barr clarified population projections to 2822 people, based on the 2011 census.
A researcher with Canberra Urban and Regional Futures David Flannery says three years ago some Yarralumla opponents to redevelopment were NIMBYS. But now he believes their current concerns are genuine.
"As you know, I am quite a strong supporter of finding sites like this [for infill development] in the centre of the city,'' Mr Flannery said. "But in this case I think it's been seen as a land grab, and there's a lot of support for that argument, in that there is no complementary services being provided as part of the work.
"I'd like to see, rather than pure residential, some mixed-use development, where there's a genuine mix of retail, commercial and residential. We have seen some wonderful examples of this in recent years, the New Acton development, the original development has retail on the ground level, three floors of offices in the middle and residential in the tower.''
YRA president Marea Fatseas says the government has set aside a token $1.5 million for making the brickworks safe, yet a back-of-the envelope estimate indicated it would reap $160 million from land sales
"If you are going to whack in a town centre-scaled development, then where are all the other infrastructure and facilities that you would normally expect a town centre to have?'' Ms Fatseas said.
Traffic flow issues and asbestos removal also needed addressing, she said.
The YRA says demand for housing is slowing and does not justify the density being proposed. Its submission says the government removed 3000 dwellings through the land release program over the next four years because of lower forecast demand.
The submission notes the Land Development Agency has scaled back Belconnen, Molonglo and Gungahlin land releases.
The ACT’s National Trust says the latest strategy has no commitment to conservation of the brickworks. "There is a comment that the ACT government is committed to conserving the national icon but there is nothing in this proposal that confirms this commitment in real terms,'' says the trust's submission.
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