Developers of a large shopping mall to be built at the southern end of Woolies carpark in Byron Bay’s CBD have been asked to go back to the drawing board over their traffic-management plans for their construction phase.
It highlights ‘one of the flaws in our planning system,’ deputy mayor Basil Cameron told The Echo, ‘where an approval can be given without full consideration of all impacts, such as in this case the safe movement of spoil.’
With completion planned for early next year, Mercato on Byron will be constructed by QLD-based Azzura corporation, who says it is aiming to be the ‘first regional shopping complex to achieve a five green star rating.’
But at a traffic committee meeting held October 14, Azzura representatives were asked for more details on their traffic-management plans.
One of Azzura’s proposals in its staged construction phase is 44 truck movements per day in the CBD for the month of February, 2017.
Cr Cameron said, ‘The problem has evolved incrementally to a point where the options for the excavation have been narrowed [and] the choices for traffic management and safe removal of spoil are now limited and likely to have significant impacts on the community.’
‘For example, the decision to create a carpark over the rail corridor appears to have shut off the option of using the corridor to safely move the spoil to a location where it could be safely loaded and transported without affecting the centre of town.’
‘We need to do better for community and develop some forward strategies to ensure that multiple truck movements, transport of waste, and damage to the road network are not repeated as similar developments are increasingly likely in coming years.’
Azzura corporation was contacted regarding this story.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
