Waterloo Plan Changes – REDWatch Update

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 You can use the links below to go directly to the information of interest:

LAHC submits plan for half of
Waterloo Estate

LAHC divides Waterloo Estate
into three precincts

Waterloo South Precinct Plan

What does the Southern proposal
tell us about the final development

What happens Next?

Council will handle Community
Engagement

How did we find out about the
Waterloo South proposal?

Human Service Plan

Update 16 June – Plan for Waterloo South still not released

 

LAHC submits plan for
half of Waterloo Estate

Land and Housing Corporation
(LAHC) in mid-May submitted their planning proposal for half the Waterloo
Estate to City of Sydney Council. In this update, I have dissected what we know
and don’t know from the information that has so far seeped out. If you just
want the links to the primary sources, they are below.

Government Sources:

City of Sydney Sources:

Media Sources

LAHC divides Waterloo
Estate into three precincts

For planning purposes, Land and
Housing Corporation (LAHC) has divided Waterloo Estate into three precincts:

  • Waterloo North – this area includes Marton,
    Turanga, Matavi and Solander
  • Waterloo Central – this area includes Banks,
    Cook and shops
  • Waterloo South – all the walk-ups and the midrise
    within the redevelopment area.

You can see a map of the new
precincts on the Waterloo page of
the Communities Plus website

Land and Housing Corporation
(LAHC) has just lodged a rezoning plan for Waterloo South with the City of Sydney.
Nothing has been lodged for the North and Central Waterloo precincts which are
listed on LAHC’s earlier indicative staging plan as not being developed for
another 13-18 years.

Like the splitting of the
Waterloo Metro from the Waterloo Estate, putting in an application for one part
of the site will make it difficult for the community to assess how the bits may
interact with other bits. For example, what happens on the Central and Northern
precinct may adversely affect sunlight the central park in the southern
precinct, but assessment of the park will have to be done against what is there
now, not knowing what might be built there in the future.

Waterloo South Precinct
Plan

The lodged proposal, called
“Waterloo South”, covers 12.32 hectares or 65 percent of the total master
planned site. This area includes 749 existing public housing units, consisting
of all the walk-ups and the mid-rises within the Estate. The area covered by
the rezoning application also covers all 125 privately owned dwellings and the
commercial property as shown on the map mentioned above.

The key feature of “Waterloo
South” is the delivery of the two promised parks, including a central park
adjacent to the new Metro station similar to that requested by Council. Open
space has increased by 4,000m2 over the earlier plan, to 2.57ha. The
amended proposal also includes wider tree-lined streets and expanded bike
paths.

The lodged plan delivers 3,000
dwellings in Waterloo South plus the park, space for businesses, shops and
community facilities. Social housing will make up 30 per cent (900 units). The
balance 70 per cent is private and affordable housing, but no information about
how many affordable housing units might be provided is revealed.

The Waterloo Communities Plus
website provides artist impressions of what might be built. Remember the
application that has been submitted is about land uses, heights and the amount
of floor space and not the design of buildings. The artist impressions just
give some idea of the heights and layout, but there is no indicative map
showing of layout of the proposed southern precinct.

From a media release, we know
there are two parks but nothing in the artist impressions show us where the
extra park is or what it might be like.

The community requested the release
of all information equivalent to that supplied for LAHC’s earlier preferred
plan if the proposal changed, but this has not happened.

You can see a fly-through of
parts of the Waterloo South proposal here
on the Telegraph website. Still artist impressions can be found in this large
PDF (15MB) here
and three others artist impressions on the Communities Plus
Waterloo site.

What does the Southern
proposal tell us about the final development

LAHC says it has cut the maximum
building heights from 40 to 32 storeys. This compares with Council’s suggested
13 storeys. Where the earlier preferred master plan plan aimed for 6,800
dwellings across the entire estate, according to the Sunday Telegraph the new
plan is for 6,200.

In the media release Minister
Pavey said, “…the proposal will include an additional 100 new social housing
dwellings in the area”. It is not clear if this refers to only the southern
area where there will be an increase of 151 social housing units or if this
sets an estate-wide target increase to 2,112.

Artist impression of the new
park shows the existing high-rises in the background. Before any redevelopment
of the towers, there would be 2,163 social housing units – 900 in Waterloo
South and 1,263 in the existing high-rises. Thirty per cent of the proposed
6,200 would only deliver 1,860 social housing units.

In the 2011 redevelopment
proposal, the towers were not included for redevelopment as they were said to
be in sound condition, but infill development was proposed around them. Council
in its alternative plan proposed retaining and renovating some of the towers as
a way to deliver more social housing. LAHC’s early options kept open the
possibility of some retention, although LAHC preferred demolition and rebuild.

The Council website says “The
NSW Land and Housing Corporation has indicated further requests will follow for
other parts of the Waterloo estate”.

What happens with the towers is
still to be determined, so we really don’t know where the final number of
social, affordable or private units that the estate might deliver or when we
might have all the Waterloo jigsaw pieces to see the whole picture.

What happens Next?

Council
posted some high level details on its website late on Friday May 29 that
outlined that it had received the Waterloo South proposal and what Council’s
role was.

In summary, the LAHC Waterloo
South application is being assessed by Council to determine if it has planning
merit or if any changes are needed. Following assessment, the City staff will
prepare a planning proposal for consideration by Council and the Central Sydney
Planning Committee.

The community see the detail of
the proposal, with its rumoured 10,000 pages of reports, when the Council staff
proposal is presented to a Council committee in several months’ time. If
supported, Council will seek a gateway determination from the NSW Government
for public consultation, which is when the community can have its say.

On the REDWatch
website Waterloo
Estate Planning Proposal Process you will find the presentation slides from
the CoS presentation which sets out each step in the process.

Council will handle
Community Engagement

The City of Sydney will
lead community
engagement during the public consultation period for the Waterloo
South planning proposal and will continue to work collaboratively with the
Department of Communities and Justice to support
social housing tenants according to material posted on its website on
Friday.

Council currently fund Redfern
Legal Centre to provide advice to Waterloo tenants. LAHC has been funding
capacity building until December 2019 as well as an Aboriginal Liaison position
and a Community Development position that services the Neighbourhood Advisory
Board’s Waterloo Redevelopment Group.

With LAHC not yet committing to
continuing the funding of the existing Waterloo positions past the end of June
2020, Council’s commitments of support to the community may be crucial to
ensuring that the local community is in a position to understand the proposals
and engage in the consultation.

Discussions between the local
services that manage the support workers, Council and LAHC are urgently needed
to ensure that the Waterloo community is in a position to understand the
proposal and to make informed input into decisions about their future.

REDWatch and local agencies have
argued there is a role throughout the life of the development for community
support and community development roles, but these were only funded by LAHC for
the master planning phase, which is ending.

How did we find out about
the Waterloo South proposal?

While LAHC lodged with Council
sometime mid-May and the Waterloo Redevelopment Group heard about the lodgement
in confidence, the first details became public only when Council
posted some high level details on its website on Friday. The Sunday
Telegraph carried the Government information drop on Sunday May 31.

Gone are the days when
Government calls a media conference to let everyone know information at the
same time. The current approach is to give the story to one media outlet
exclusively in the expectation that at least they will run it. This means that
other media outlets either run the story from the initial publication or ignore
it because it is now old news.

The consequence of such a media
drop to announce changes to a public housing community about decisions for
their homes and neighbourhood is that all do not easily access it. Only those
who normally get that printed newspaper see it and an online version, generally
with additional information not in the paper, appears behind a paywall only
visible to subscribers. This is not a good mechanism.

The drop also included a video
“fly through” of the revised project. While the video was not behind the
paywall, when you pause it to understand what it tells you the video is
obscured.

You will find a scan of the
newspaper article Megacity
reaching for the sky in a smaller way – Sunday Telegraph  on the
REDWatch website with some notes about what was in the online version. Probably
best hidden from Waterloo tenants was a line in the online version that said,
“Public housing blocks in the area still have security guards on site, dubbed
“concierges”.”

The Ministers’
Media release was only generally released to stakeholders Monday 1 June afternoon
along with an update on the Communities Plus Waterloo page. It is of great
concern that after successive governments have deliberately concentrated
disadvantage in public housing without the necessary supports for tenants, that
the Minister for Housing talks about the redevelopment t of public housing as
“deconcentrating disadvantage” as if those who have been given priority
allocations will somehow disappear with their problems as a result of the
redevelopment.

Also on Monday, Clover Moore
also made some Facebook comments
about Council receiving the LAHC proposal and late in the afternoon, The
Lord Mayor issued a more formal letter
to residents about the Waterloo Estate.

Human Service Plan

It was pleasing to see in the
Lord Mayor’s letter to residents her undertaking that “I will continue to
advocate for the essential wrap-around services that our current and future
Waterloo communities need. It is critical that the Government develop a Human
Services Plan alongside the planning framework, to address the issues that
social housing tenants face”.

The community is still waiting
for a public commitment from LAHC and DCJ that the Human Services Plan they
promised for Waterloo will be delivered alongside the planning framework.

Source: Based on REDWatch email to members and supporters 2 June 2020

Update 16 June – Plan for Waterloo South
still not released

 

The
plan for Waterloo South has significantly changed from the Waterloo
Preferred Masterplan – January 2019, which has now disappeared
from the LAHC website but is on the REDWatch website. The community requested
if the plan was to change was that LAHC should release equivalent information
for its new plan. The information released did not meet the preferred
masterplan test. A key missing element is that there is no site plan with
building and park locations and building heights. There is even less
information that LAHC released for the Redfern Build to Rent site.

While
the Council has told the Waterloo Redevelopment Group that it is up to LAHC if
it wants to release information, LAHC staff have told community representatives
that the Council has asked it not to release the information. LAHC, not wanting
to upset Council (the consent authority) did not release the information that
residents thought they should receive under the engagement principles agreed
with LAHC.

REDWatch
is calling on Council to withdraw its request for LAHC not to release such
information. The local community was promised transparency and involvement in
their planning process by LAHC and LAHC should be allowed to honour its
undertakings to the community or be held unambiguously accountable for not
doing so.