Do you want to see a high-rise Cowes?

By Linda Marston, Island Voice

Plans for a five-storey hotel to be built next to the Cowes Cultural Centre will voted on at the September Bass Coast Shire council meeting.

A VCAT hearing in the past fortnight has seen the plans modified: removing hotel rooms from the fourth floor and replacing them with a smaller walled terrace, however the overall building is still five storeys in height.

The Bass Coast Planning Scheme Amendment C151 (2019) sets heights of seven storeys for the Isle of Wight site, five storeys for the Warley site and three storeys along Thompson Avenue.

The idea being the town centre would maintain a lower profile that would not greatly exceed the height of the iconic cypress trees, preventing an invasive visual impact of buildings on the streetscape. The planned hotel at 85 Thompson Avenue does not comply with the zoning changes that were painstakingly established at that time.

Island Voice questions why council engages in lengthy and expensive consultation if they are not going to enforce the agreed changes to the zoning. The real danger is that once a precedent has been set other developers will seek exceptions to the planning overlay and we will end up with a high-rise town centre.

Parking

Disappointingly, the changed plans have not resulted in a withdrawal of the parking waivers requested.

The hotel is claiming there is sufficient surrounding public parking at the transit centre and supermarkets, so they do not need to build all the spaces required by regulation.

But wasn’t the transit centre developed as a place for visitors to park all-day, while they visited the beach, shopped, lunched and, hopefully, spent more money? If we allow a parking waiver for the hotel to use such parking then the transit centre will not perform the function that we, the ratepayers, created it for.

Granting such waivers, surely contradicts council’s introduction of parking sensors to better manage the “limited” parking in Cowes. Let us not forget there are two new and significant pieces of community infrastructure: the Cultural Centre and our new community hospital, which abut the transit centre.

These important community facilities should use the transit centre that our rates have built, but I strongly object to subsidising the profits of a developer with the rates I have paid.

Lobby

The amended plans will come back to council in September for further consideration.

This is your opportunity to let your councillors know how you feel about this project before this vote. By preventing a precedent occurring you may be able to prevent other height limit increases in the future.

If you do not want to see five-storey buildings everywhere along Thompson Avenue and zoning heights exceeded elsewhere, then demand your councillors enforce the zoning height limits now, otherwise what protections do our planning regulations provide for our towns?

Island Voice is opposing the hotel development in VCAT so please join us in our opposition.

Please note the Warley site has been sold and planning is occurring for the Isle of Wight site, so whatever happens at the hotel development will set an important precedent.