Momentous win for orderly and proper planning - JDAP Rejects North Freo Ford Factory Tower Proposal

North Fremantle Community Association stalwarts Gerry MacGill and Ann Forma are walking on water.

That’s not so much their assessment as the collective view of the many North Freo residents who have paid homage to Gerry and Anne’s extraordinary powers of organisation and persuasion that has resulted in a JDAP – a joint development assessment panel comprising 3 out-of-town planning professionals and 2 local Freo councillors – saying ‘No’ to the proposal of the developer Three Oceans for a towering apartment complex on the former Ford factory (aka Matilda Bay Brewery) site, at Stirling Highway/McCabe Street, North Fremantle.

Artist’s impression of the proposed development

Last Thursday afternoon, after a hearing before JDAP during which some 26 community members and expert planners were allowed 5 minutes each to address their written submissions to JDAP on varying topics that all indicated the development application for a 27 level, 88 metre high complex on the site should be refused outright, the JDAP did just that and refused the development application outright.

After all, the proposed complex far exceeded the height limits laid down in a structure plan endorsed by the WA Planning Commission as recently as 2020. The implicit, if not explicit, invitation to JDAP by the developer and its professional advisers to feel free to ignore the orderly and proper planning rules set out in the structure plan, fell on deaf ears. Discretion exists in development control decision making to sensibly adapt existing development rules, but not to ignore orderly and proper planning principles laid out succinctly in relevant, well thought out planning policies.

What a win for the community. The public interest in orderly and proper planning actually means something. A precedent has now been set. The expectation so many local community members have learned to hold, that JDAPs pretty much always side with developers on big projects, may now have to be reconsidered.

When we spoke with Gerry MacGill after the win, he recognised the community’s success was a ‘significant achievement’. He also said the ultimate victory by residents showed how the existing planning process, which makes it so hard for real community engagement in the process, is ‘flawed’. Gerry said the community ‘Want better process’. They want to be as equally involved in it as the developers and their cohort of architects and planners and other professionals always are, from the very beginning of the process.

We are pleased to reproduce below the presentation Gerry MacGill made on behalf of the North Fremantle Community Association to the JDAP. It conveys the flavour of the issues placed before the JDAP in the Ford/Matilda Bay Brewery case, and which appears largely to have been accepted by the JDAP members, and it also conveys much of the frustration that communities around the State experience when a JDAP takes control of development applications that have the potential to significantly affect their loval communities.

GERRY MACGILL’S PRESENTATION TO JDAP 16 MARCH, 2023

Thank you for this opportunity.

There are many here who will present their views at length on every aspect of this proposal. I will attempt to deal as briefly as possible with what I consider is the absolute fundamental reason we are here today.

The Government’s explicit, clearly stated reason for JDAPs is …..
As a key component of planning reform in Western Australia, Development Assessment Panels (DAPs) are intended to enhance planning expertise in decision making by improving the balance between technical advice and local knowledge.

So the reason we are here today is in pursuit of the elusive holy grail of improving the balance between technical advice and local knowledge.

Technical advice is present in abundance in the Fremantle officers’ RAR report, endorsed by Council’s Planning Committee, that finds a host of reasons why the application should be refused, and also in the persons of many of those attending on the part of the community, as well as those of the applicant.

Local knowledge is also present in abundance by the community members present, but it is also to be found in the documented history of this site’s development as far back as 2015.

Back then, the North Fremantle Community Association (at Council’s invitation) undertook a full day workshop titled LPP 3.11 McCabe Street Heights Policy Review: Proposed Discretionary Criteria, which formed the basis for the Structure Plan approved in 2020 The analysis and recommendations of the workshop’s report are too detailed to quote in full, but the most important issues identified by the community were:

• Heights to be varied, articulated and responsive to the landscape (no big blocks).
• Buildings must be ‘people friendly’ and contribute positively to North Fremantle character (relate to surrounds, facing the street, accessible, no garage frontages or ‘gated’ communities).
• Matilda Bay Brewery heritage façade must be conserved and the place activated.
• Provision of an integrated, permeable and walkable neighbourhood with strong pedestrian and cycle linkages to the beach, river, train station and public open spaces.
• Traffic is managed effectively to ensure Thompson Road is not a ‘through road’.
• Provision of a high amenity public realm i.e. substantial shade trees, quality POS, place activation and ‘people friendly streets’.

The present application fails on each one of these six criteria, as several submissions today will confirm.

Whereas ‘reform’ is a word loaded with many interpretations to suit the motives of its user, the word ‘balance’ has only one meaning: to give equal weight to each side of the scale.

I invite you to show us where the balance is to be found in the case of this application. Where can it be shown that the applicant has engaged in a genuine dialogue with the community to create a development that would complement its existing values of urbanism?

Where can we find evidence that JDAP has asked the applicant to demonstrate that such a dialogue took place before a fully-fledged proposal was put out for public comment?

I think I can assert without fear of contradiction that the answer to both questions is “nowhere”.

My NFCA colleagues and the community we try to faithfully represent are weary of this pointless urban warfare. ‘Intensification’ is not a dirty word in Fremantle. It has been going on for decades. Engaging with communities and their councils in finding solutions that accommodate increased population but conserve the amenity and values of the existing is a creative exercise, not the vexatious one we are engaged in today.

JDAP may be all powerful. It may set aside all precedent and planning provisions, local and state, but it cannot ignore its stated purpose of improving the balance between technical advice and local knowledge.

I submit therefore that this JDAP committee today should refuse this application on the grounds that:

a) it fails to satisfy the purpose for which DAPs were established;

b) that this failure is evident in the demonstrable lack of engagement with the community by the developers;

c) that the proposal is as a consequence seriously out of balance with the expressed values of the community; and

d) that, as made clear by the RAR, it offends against the long-accepted principles of orderly and proper planning that Planning Schemes were developed to achieve, and which communities have every right to expect will be respected.

(The bold text is as emphasised in Gerry MacGill’s original written submission to the JDAP.)

By Michael Barker, Editor, Fremantle Shipping News

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