Hans Lovejoy
With the ink barely dry on the approved DA for an exclusive restaurant bordering Scarrabelotti’s lookout, owners Paschal Grenquist and Yuuka Shibasaki have listed their 11 acre property for sale.
Apart from the yet to be built restaurant, the land comprises dual occupany homes with a ‘resort style pool’.
Staff recommended – and a councillor majority supported – access for the 40-seat restaurant to be a public lookout despite concerns from neighbours over increased traffic and amenity impacts.
It also puts into question Council’s policy of dual occupancies, which was to support affordable housing.
The policy has increasingly been used to expand wealthy property portfolios.
During the DA exhibition, neighbours argued that using part of the lookout area for restaurant parking – which was contained in the first iteration of the plan – was completely inappropriate because this land was donated by the Scarrabelotti family for community use.
There was no indication that the owners were going to sell once the DA was approved.
Greens Council candidate Duncan Dey told The Echo, ‘The report to Councillors on 18 June, when they approved the DA, said the proposal included plans to “embellish the lookout (which is located within the road reserve) as it provides access to the restaurant site”.
‘In other words, the traveller will arrive not knowing much about property boundaries and probably get the impression the lookout belongs to the restaurant. Fred Dagg would turn in his grave.
‘Assuming the restaurant is permissible in the “7(d) Scenic Escarpment” zoning of the property, access should have been arranged at its northern end instead of through the guts of the Lookout, which was donated to us, the public, by Frank Scarrabellotti’.
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