The height of this development is ridiculous. It is more than double the height of any other building in Waterloo. It will completely block the sun and light to our apartment which faces west on 401/6 Lachlan St Waterloo.
David and Lorraine Fevre

Objection: Neighbourhood Amenity - sky view / light

The proposed building 3A is 36 stories, and will be the significant view looking west down Potter Street. Planning across the East Redfern / Zetland / Green Square corridor has allowed for building heights and location that preserves views of the sky at the end of streets, increasing neighbourhood amenity and avoiding “surrounding” residents with apartment buildings.

The proposed view west down Potter St, and along Bourke St, will be dominated by this significant structure. Maybe the tower can be reduced in height, and/or placed back from the development boundary to lessen the impact.


Objection: Building Height

The proposed height of the proposed tower, building 3A, is 36 floors. This is too high. Across the corridor from East Redfern to Zetland and Green Square, developments such as Moore Park Gardens (includes 2 x 20 story towers), Infinity Towers at Green Square (20 story), and other developments have provided high density housing without the need for comparatively extreme height in their development.

[Ref Drawing 0401 OVERALL ELEVATIONS - PRECINCT - BOURKE STREET (EAST)]

As an owner-occupier of a residential unit at 1 Danks Street, Waterloo I am strongly objecting to the Development Application for 881-885 Bourke Street, within which ‘Parcel 1’ neighbours our property along Danks and Young Streets.

As residents of 1 Danks St, we have always understood the area to be guided by a development framework that would limit any adjacent buildings to our site to seven storeys. That height is already well above our 3 storey building, but the guidelines were publicly available and informed many of our residents’ decisions to buy and reside here.

I was alarmed to discover the new proposal for the vacant site bears little resemblance to those long-standing plans.

In a previous community information evening, the developer – Coronation - first indicated that they would seek to significantly increase the size of the neighbouring buildings, with a large 20 storey tower being notionally located to the south-west corner of our building on Young St.
In that session, concerns were raised about the obvious intrusions that a building of that size would have on our existing homes. The presenting architects assured us that they would be using the building forms to minimise those impacts, but instead it seems that the current proposal - in particular the development on Parcel 1 - appears to do exactly the opposite of this. The latest design moves building bulk across the full Young Street frontage, pushing height and density right up against our homes and ignoring our residential community that has existed here for years.

Privacy is one of our major concerns, along with significant loss of daylight and quality of living space. A 19-storey tower overlooking a low-rise building like ours creates constant visual intrusion and the proposed orientation of apartments and balconies means residents in the new tower will be looking straight into our living rooms and bedrooms, removing any sense of personal privacy and fundamentally changing how we live in our own spaces. The new design appears to provide more mindful consideration to not overshadowing the new Dasco development to the south of the site, leaving our smaller residence to absorb the most severe impacts. There appears to be no fair transition in height, no thoughtful modulation – just an oversized building placed directly against the most vulnerable edge of the precinct.

Coronation previously presented “Scale & Grain” as one of their core design principles for the development, with care given to creating ‘a human scaled neighbourhood through built form’.
I would argue that the current proposals seem to achieve the complete opposite of this intention.
It places our building under far greater strain – compromising our privacy, reducing access to sunlight, removing our views and visual connection to the tree canopies in adjacent streets. It will undoubtedly affect our overall wellbeing.

Unlike the surrounding commercial properties, our homes would be deeply affected by overshadowing, noise and privacy intrusion this development would bring, yet the application doesn’t seem to recognise this imbalance and little detail is shared to specifically explain how our building has been considered during the design process. The drawing package presents no sections through the site that accurately present the scale imbalance between our building and the proposed tower. Their submission features a real-estate listing for an apartment in our building as their primary analysis of our address, demonstrating little depth of knowledge on our specific conditions.

In short, the proposal puts a disproportionate burden on a small residential building that was meant to be protected by a carefully considered planning framework. We’re not anti-development, we’re simply asking for a design that respects that framework and doesn’t sideline established communities.