Developer wants to lead ‘affordable housing’ component, despite a Council scheme
A new medium-density village for up to 1,400 people could be built on land between Brunswick Heads and Mullumbimby after the owners of a large greenfield site adjacent to Gulgan Road submitted preliminary development plans to Byron Shire Council.
In a move with potential flow-on effects for thousands of people living in the Shire’s north, Gulgan Road Property Pty Ltd has submitted a draft planning proposal in relation to a 37.9-hectare parcel of land fronting onto Gulgan Road and Bashforths Lane.
The planning proposal is due to come before this week’s Council meeting, where councillors will decide whether to give it a preliminary tick of approval.
Should the green light be given, and the state government then follows suit by providing a favourable Gateway determination, it would pave the way for sloping paddocks beside Gulgan Road to be rezoned from rural to residential.
A detailed development application process would then occur and then, finally, the commencement of a staged construction process.
The developer says that, unlike ‘conventional suburbia’, the new ‘Gulgan Village’ would feature diverse housing types, including lower-cost dwellings, units, larger lots for co-housing and intentional communities, secondary dwellings, semi- and fully-detached dwellings.
‘This is a new exemplar living environment responsive to the needs of modern society’.
Higher density
However, the village will also be of a higher density than Byron’s other suburbs, featuring a floor space ratio of 0.9:1 and a maximum height limit of 11.5 metres – 2.5 metres higher than the limit for the vast majority of the Shire.
Arranged in precincts, Gulgan Village will also be integrated with a light industrial area, which is already the subject of a planning proposal by the same developer.
The entire development is predicted to generate between 1,900 and 2,600 additional car movements per day on the surrounding streets.
The nature of the new road arrangements proposed as part of the development means that a significant proportion of this traffic will be funnelled towards Brunswick Heads.
Earmarked by Council
While plans for the new village may come as a surprise to many, they in fact date back to the 2022 floods.
The Gulgan Road site was earmarked for housing by the NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA) following this disaster and was subsequently included in the Resilient Lands strategy.
It was then nominated as a future residential area in Byron Council’s revamped 2024 Residential Lands Strategy.
This means that while the proposal may be amended as part of the planning process, it is likely to receive approval from both Council and the state government because it is already part of their housing plans.
Gulgan Road Property Pty Ltd has gradually acquired the lots which make up the site of the proposed suburb since July 2021.
The director of the company is Brandon Saul, the developer behind the Habitat precinct in the Byron Industrial estate, and the revamped Fletcher Street Cottage homeless drop-in centre.
He was also instrumental in plans to build a cluster of group homes for at-risk single-parent families, which is also located on the Gulgan Road site.
What’s proposed?
The Gulgan Village would feature several interconnected precincts, including the light industrial area and residential precincts featuring different housing types.
The dwellings will typically be two to two-and-a-half storeys, featuring structures which step down the steeply sloped land.
There will be a high proportion of one and two-bedroom dwellings in a variety of forms, including work-live units, micro lots, secondary dwellings above garages, compact houses, apartments, and town houses.
The village will be interspersed with open space areas, community facilities and shops. Parks, walking tracks and community facilities would be owned and managed through an overarching ‘community scheme’.
The whole development, including the industrial land, would be managed through a set of nested community plans.
This would allow the community to potentially run its own power generation and backup storage service, and its own composting and garbage collection.
In addition to building a gravity networks water supply and sewer infrastructure, the developer would be responsible for building a new intersection at Bashforths Lane in the north of the site, and a collector road intersection with Gulgan Road including a dual lane roundabout.
The Saddle Road would be closed to cars and used as a key pedestrian and cycle link through the site.
Affordable housing?
While Byron Council staff’s assessment of the proposal is broadly supportive, a potential sticking point has emerged in the form of affordable housing and other developer contributions.
Council recently introduced an affordable housing contributions scheme, under which developers are required to make significant contributions to the stock of affordable housing in the Shire.
Staff originally called for 10 per cent of the total housing stock in Gulgan Village to become affordable housing, but late last year, a majority of Byron councillors acceded to the developer’s request for a more flexible approach in the form of a private planning agreement between it and the Council.
The planning proposal that is now before Council does not specify how much affordable housing there will be. Rather, this would be determined by an ‘affordable housing expert’ chosen by Council, and paid for by the developer.
‘A potential outcome of this decision, and of the “affordable housing expert” report under the draft planning agreement is that the assessed contribution amount falls below 10 per cent, with five per cent already committed to the Arakwal,’ Council staff said in their assessment of the Gulgan Village proposal.
‘This presents a risk for Council, as if the final amount is five per cent or less, no additional affordable housing contributions will be required under the draft planning agreement to Council from the development of the site.’
The draft planning agreement also proposes that a management committee be set up to ‘consider, manage, and determine the type, timing, and recipients’ of all development contributions in relation to the project, including affordable housing.
Council staff opposed
‘Council should firmly reject the inclusion of this provision in the final planning agreement,’ staff said.
‘It is a construct by the proponents, not at the request or direction of the Council. Including this provision would severely undermine the Council’s current authority to receive, manage and allocate affordable housing contributions.
Furthermore, it does not reflect Council’s currently adopted implementation procedures for affordable housing contributions…’
The issue of how much affordable housing will be included in the new suburb, and how this and the other development contributions will be allocated, promises to be a significant point of contention that is likely to be debated at length at this week’s meeting.
Should Byron Council provide preliminary approval of the planning proposal, the matter would then go to the state government for a so-called ‘Gateway determination’.
Only once these steps have been completed will the developer be able to submit a Development Application (DA) for the village which would provide specific detail about the type and number of dwellings.
Only once this detail has been worked out would construction be allowed to commence.
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