Submission on SSD-84467726, Kogarah Golf Club Redevelopment, Concept & Stage 1 Works

Submitted via NSW Planning Portal

Property affected: Marsh Street frontage, Wolli Creek

I am writing as a nearby resident with a property fronting Marsh Street to raise concerns about traffic, congestion, parking and noise arising from this Concept Proposal and Stage 1 Works.

The application acknowledges an increase in noise from both construction and ongoing operations, but includes no plans to mitigate or manage this impact for residents on Marsh Street. Congestion impacts on local streets are also not addressed. These gaps need to be resolved before consent is considered.

Traffic, congestion and parking
The concept includes warehouse, distribution and data centre uses across five buildings. This scale of logistics use will generate substantial heavy vehicle movement on and around Marsh Street, both during Stage 1 construction (bulk earthworks, road extension works) and ongoing once operational. Local streets already carry significant traffic and are difficult to park in. The application does not address how construction and future freight movements will affect congestion on Marsh Street and surrounding roads. I ask the Department to require:

- A detailed traffic impact assessment specific to Marsh Street and surrounding streets, including heavy vehicle routing, frequency, time-of-day restrictions, and modelled congestion impact at peak times
- A parking impact assessment addressing construction worker and staff parking demand on surrounding streets, given existing parking constraints
- Conditions limiting truck movements on Marsh Street during early morning, evening and night hours
- Clear separation of construction traffic and future freight traffic from local residential access

Noise
The application acknowledges noise increases from both the construction phase and ongoing operations but proposes no mitigation. Warehouse, distribution and data centre operations typically involve loading dock activity, generator and cooling plant noise, and potential 24-hour operation. I ask the Department to require:

- A construction noise and vibration management plan specific to Marsh Street, covering bulk earthworks and road extension works
- A noise impact assessment addressing cumulative operational noise from all five blocks, not just individual buildings
- Operating hour restrictions or noise limits for loading docks and plant equipment audible from residential frontages on Marsh Street
- Data centre cooling and generator noise specifically assessed and conditioned, given these often run continuously

I ask that these matters be addressed as conditions of consent before approval, rather than deferred to later stage applications.

Name withheld

I strongly oppose the proposed multi-billion Kogarah Golf Club redevelopment by Stockland and John Boyd Properties, and urge the Department of Planning to reject the current proposal and undertake improved consultation with the wider Inner West/Bays community.
The project fails to meet the state's sustainability standards, lacks meaningful benefits for the surrounding area, degrades the environment in a sensitive riparian zone which is also historically important (Captain Cook's Endeavor expedition), and includes a facility for a destructive industry. It beggars belief that a greenbelt site in the centre of coastal Sydney is to be mutilated in this way.
Data centres are historically insular, high-resource operations that do not organically contribute to the local community. They consume massive amounts of energy and water while creating very few jobs, and actively threaten others. Furthermore, this proposal offers no pathway to Net Zero operations, relies heavily on grid-stressed electricity, and fails to rule out the use of polluting diesel backup generators.
The submission demands the project be rejected or drastically redesigned around these key pillars:
• Community and Culture: Address the completely inadequate community consultation process, which falsely claimed engagement with local environmental groups.
• Climate and Flood Risks: Account for modelling that shows the entire development footprint will be underwater due to sea-level rise and storm surges by 2100.
• The Cooks River Legacy Fund: If modified approval occurs in any way, the developers must contribute to the river's health, establishing a stewardship group to naturalise riverbanks and restore local saltmarsh habitats.
• Environmental Protections: Mandate a minimum 100-metre riparian corridor to shield the river from a towering 70-metre-high wall, preserve the existing tree canopy to fight urban heat, and enforce large-scale rainwater harvesting.
A project of this historic scale must not be allowed to proceed as a closed-off, environmentally damaging development. It must be redesigned to leave a lasting, positive ecological and recreational legacy for the community.

Keep the local community ecosystem safe! If I see a data centre on the river I will spew.

As an architect and long-term resident of Wolli Creek, I have significant concerns regarding this proposal. In my professional opinion, the development fails to respond appropriately to the site's unique characteristics or the broader urban and environmental context. Rather than complementing the existing character of the area, it introduces a scale and form of development that is fundamentally inconsistent with its surroundings and risks setting an undesirable precedent for future development.

The long-term impacts extend well beyond the site boundaries. The visual bulk, environmental footprint, increased energy demands, and the loss of one of the area's few remaining open green spaces will have lasting consequences for the amenity and character of Wolli Creek. Once this land is developed, the opportunity to preserve or repurpose it for uses that provide meaningful public, recreational, or ecological value will be lost permanently.

What is particularly difficult to reconcile is the proposed replacement of the former golf course. While many residents accepted that redevelopment of the site was inevitable, there was a reasonable expectation that it would deliver broader community and economic benefits—such as employment opportunities, mixed-use development, public facilities, or enhanced public open space. A commercial precinct that actively contributes to the local economy and community would at least provide a tangible public benefit.

Replacing this land with a data centre, however, offers very limited community value relative to the scale of its impacts. It removes a significant open space while creating a largely inaccessible industrial-style facility that provides minimal activation, limited employment once operational, and little contribution to the public realm. The community is effectively being asked to surrender a valuable landscape for a development that serves infrastructure needs without delivering a commensurate local benefit.

For these reasons, I strongly urge the local community to object to the proposal and encourage other residents to carefully consider its long-term implications. Decisions of this magnitude will shape Wolli Creek for generations, and it is essential that development on such a strategically important site delivers outcomes that genuinely balance economic growth, environmental responsibility, and community benefit.

I would like the public to be properly canvassed on this project. The Cooks River is the most toxic river in Australia. We work hard trying to help it deal with all the problems it faces. The birds and animals and fish also need protection for their wellbeing against industrial pollution. Please consult the community at large on this proposal. Once the damage is done, and the scale of this proposal is huge, the damage is so permanent. I live on the river in Marrickville.

This development will not benefit the community in any noticeable way and infact cause harm.
Data centres have been shown to increase infrasonic noise pollution in the local community as well as use large amounts of water.
This water usage will increase surrounding power bills and also as a water scarce city reduce the availablity to those in need.
This push for data centres is based off multinational companies that very rarely pay tax and will not provide it's worth to the community in any noticeable way.

Please use this area for something profitable for the community in regards to third spaces or public works.

I object to the data centre on the Cooks River for several reasons but primarily environmental reasons.
Locating a massive data centre will be unsightly and together with the growing airport will make a larger heat island ie. built, hard, heat creating surfaces. Not to mention sad to lose what was well used green space in the form of the golf course which as a major city we should protect.
From my knowledge as an engineer data centres often use adjacent bodies of water for cooling of massive computer equipment. In the heat exchange water is returned to the body of water at a higher temperature.
From my research the following animal species would be adversely affected by increased temperatures and must be thoroughly investigated before even considerting a project of this type.
My research.
Temperature rises in the Cooks River would impact its fragile ecosystem by reducing dissolved oxygen in the water, disrupting breeding cues, and pushing cold-blooded species toward their thermal limits. The most critically affected animal life in and around the Cooks River catchment includes Fish and Eels. Species like mullet, bream, flathead, and longfin eels rely heavily on specific temperature cues to breed and migrate. Warmer water drastically lowers dissolved oxygen levels, leading to physiological stress, sluggishness, or lethal fish kills.
There are up to 11 frog species in the Cooks River and Botany area. Frogs are highly sensitive to temperature and moisture; warming waters and droughts lead to dehydration, compromised habitats, and failed reproduction.
Waterbirds, including pelicans, herons, and cormorants, depend on the river’s fish populations for food. Rising temperatures degrade food chains and alter the timing of breeding or migration.
The Cooks River is occasionally home to native aquatic turtles. Like other cold-blooded animals, changes in water temperatures can severely disrupt their life-cycle events.
Endangered Grey-headed Flying Foxes, which live along the river's catchment, are highly vulnerable to extreme heat events. Heatwaves frequently cause mass die-offs and dehydration among bat colonies.
Aquatic insects and crustaceans are the base of the river's food web. Spikes in water temperature reduce their numbers, triggering a chain reaction of food shortages for local fish, birds, and predators.
Please reconsider this project in light of the risk to the environment in this location and along the entire Cooks River and adjacent Wolli Creek system potentially all the way to Botany Bay.

Submission: Objection to the Kogarah Golf Club Redevelopment Proposal
To Whom It May Concern,
I write to formally object to the proposed redevelopment of the Kogarah Golf Club site, specifically the inclusion of a data centre adjacent to the Cooks River.
I do not believe that this location is appropriate for a large-scale data centre due to the significant environmental, planning, and community impacts associated with such a development.

My concerns include the following:
1. Environmental Risk to the Cooks River
The Cooks River is an environmentally sensitive waterway that has been the focus of substantial public investment in restoration and water quality improvements. Constructing and operating a major data centre immediately adjacent to the river introduces unnecessary environmental risks.
Development on this site should prioritise protecting and improving the river corridor rather than introducing infrastructure that carries additional environmental risks.

2. Incompatibility with the Character of the Area
The Kogarah Golf Club site forms an important open space adjacent to the river. A large industrial-style data centre is fundamentally different in character from surrounding recreational, residential, and environmental land uses.
3. Noise and Air Quality
Although often described as low-impact developments, data centres generate ongoing noise from cooling systems, ventilation equipment, transformers, and emergency generator testing.
Residents and users of nearby parks and walking tracks should not be subjected to continuous mechanical noise or periodic generator operation.
4. Loss of Community and Recreational Value
The redevelopment should place greater emphasis on community recreation, open space, ecological restoration, and public access to the river rather than industrial infrastructure.
Once industrial development occupies this riverfront land, opportunities for future environmental enhancement and public recreation are significantly reduced.
5. Precedent for Future Development
Approving a major data centre in this location may establish an undesirable planning precedent for further industrial development along the Cooks River corridor.
Planning decisions should reinforce the long-term protection and enhancement of waterways rather than incrementally introducing incompatible land uses.
6. Need for a More Appropriate Site
Data centres can be located in many industrial and commercial precincts that are better suited to their operational requirements and have less environmental sensitivity.
There appears to be no compelling planning justification for placing this facility immediately adjacent to one of Sydney's most environmentally significant urban waterways.
Conclusion
For these reasons, I respectfully request that the consent authority refuse or substantially amend the proposal to remove the data centre component from the redevelopment.
Future redevelopment of the Kogarah Golf Club site should prioritise environmental protection, community recreation, biodiversity, and improved public access to the Cooks River.
Thank you for considering this submission.

For millions of people arriving in Sydney each year, this stretch of the Cooks River forms part of their first impression of the city. Few places so clearly reveal the meeting of urban life and the natural environment, and few offer such a rare opportunity to show that the two can be designed to strengthen one another. This site has the potential to become Sydney's exemplar of river-sensitive urban development—a place where economic prosperity, ecological restoration, climate resilience and public life are not competing objectives but complementary ones. A place that captures the imagination from the air, inspires curiosity, invites exploration on the ground, and demonstrates that Sydney has matured beyond the false choice between development and nature.

It is because I believe the current proposal does not yet realise the opportunity this site presents that I object to the proposal in its current form. I respectfully ask the Department to reconsider how this site could achieve a far greater long-term public outcome.

The story of the Cooks River today is no longer one of decline, but of recovery. Across the catchment, the NSW Government, local councils, Sydney Water, community organisations and thousands of volunteers are investing significant public resources in restoring riparian corridors, wetlands, saltmarsh, biodiversity and public access. Year by year, damaged landscapes are being reclaimed and healed, water quality is improving, habitat is returning, and the river is slowly recovering from generations of neglect. These efforts reflect a fundamental shift in contemporary planning: our rivers are no longer regarded as leftover land or development opportunities, but as essential green and blue infrastructure that underpins healthy, resilient and liveable cities. This recovery is not simply ecological. It is social and cultural. Increasingly, the Cooks River is valued as a place where people walk, cycle, paddle, volunteer, learn and reconnect with nature. This proposal should be assessed within that context.

Against this context, the question should not simply be how this site can accommodate development, but how development can make the greatest contribution to the long-term recovery of the Cooks River. Landscapes do not need to be pristine to be valuable. A landscape should not be regarded as low value simply because it has been degraded. In many cases, degraded landscapes represent our greatest opportunities for ecological restoration and long-term public benefit. Some of our greatest environmental successes have come from protecting and restoring places once considered degraded or of limited significance. This site forms part of a much larger river system already undergoing a long-term process of ecological recovery. The greatest long-term public value of this site will be realised through the successful integration of development with the recovery of the Cooks River corridor.

Developments of this significance should aspire to more than simply accommodating new buildings and infrastructure. They should be assessed by the net public benefit they create over the long term, a benefit that extends beyond economic outcomes to include ecological restoration, climate resilience, biodiversity, public access, community wellbeing and the creation of places that strengthen the identity and liveability of our cities. This site presents a rare opportunity to demonstrate that development can do more than minimise environmental harm, it can actively repair and strengthen the landscape in which it is built. This site should not simply accommodate development. It should demonstrate how development can regenerate a landscape.

The issue is not whether this site should be developed, but what standard of development it should represent. Sydney needs employment, investment and economic growth, and developments such as this have an important role to play. Equally, strategic planning is about ensuring that the right development occurs in the right place and that developments of this significance deliver the greatest possible long-term public benefit. The measure of success should not be whether development fits within the site, but whether the site is ultimately better because of the development. This site offers a rare opportunity to demonstrate exactly that. Exceptional sites deserve exceptional thinking. They are opportunities for planning leadership, setting the standard that future developments will seek to follow. This is one of those sites.

The opportunity before us is not to maximise the development potential of every square metre of the site, but to maximise the long-term public value it can create. Sometimes the most significant planning decision is not what is built, but what is deliberately retained, restored and connected. The confidence of great planning is often demonstrated not by how much it builds, but by how thoughtfully it shapes the spaces between buildings. This is ultimately a question of design ambition rather than development intensity. The Cooks River should not be treated as the edge of the development, but as its defining feature. A wider riparian corridor, expanded habitat, meaningful public open space and stronger ecological connections should be viewed not as constraints, but as the qualities that could transform this proposal into an exemplar of contemporary river-sensitive urban development.

Knowledge creates responsibility. We now understand the ecological, social and economic value of connected river corridors, green infrastructure and nature-positive development far better than previous generations. The challenge before us is no longer a lack of knowledge. It is whether our planning decisions will reflect that knowledge. We have become very good at designing buildings. The challenge before us now is to become equally good at designing the landscapes that make those buildings worth living beside.

The legacy of this proposal will not be measured solely by what is built, but by the standard it establishes for those that follow. This site has the potential to become a blueprint for how Sydney integrates economic prosperity, ecological restoration and public life into a single landscape. For the millions of people who arrive in Sydney each year and see this landscape from the air, it could become the first indication that this is a city that has learnt to build with its landscape rather than despite it—a place that captures the imagination, inspires curiosity and invites exploration on the ground. I hope the Department asks not only what can be built here, but what this place can teach us about the future of planning in Sydney and what those who inherit this city will thank us for preserving, restoring and creating.

Yours faithfully,

Earlwood, NSW

We do not want a data centre in close proximity to a river and nature reserves.It will draw resources that should belong to, and be used for, the benefit of the people of sydney, not to generate profit.