Saturday 12 December 2009

False Cape to be removed as a "special facilities" on Cairns Plan

In September Cairns Regional Council proposed an amendment to the Cairns Plan to remove the False Cape Special Facilities from the planning scheme.

After a review of State Interests, the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning advised that Council may proceed to notify the proposed amendment.

The amendment will now undergo public notification until 5 February 2010.

The proposed amendment can be viewed at the Customer Service areas of Spence Street and Front Street administration buildings, or can be downloaded on the Council’s website.

6 comments:

Quentin Chou said...

I wonder whether anyone can explain what this means in lay terms. I have read the documentation and it appears to me to be meaningless.

Denis Walls said...

I’ll do my best Quentin.
The Special Facilities status which the site has enjoyed since 1987 was the result of a Special Facilities Overlay. This sits over the underlying zoning of the land (which in the current CairnsPlan is Rural 1).Thus once Special Facilities is removed, it would require a new subdivision approval which would clash with the 2031 regional plan. This states that the area is outside the urban footprint meaning that new approvals should not be granted.

2.3.2(b) &(c) of the Regional Plan states that development on land greater than 1:6 (e.g. most of the False Cape site) is subject to impact assessment and that development shall not occur on slopes greater than 1:6.

Of course there is a current subdivision approval but Reef Cove is in the hands of the receivers and RC’s lenders have collapsed leaving mayhem both financial and physical. The property was recently on the market and attracted no interest. If there are no appeals of the Special Facilities amendment by 5 February 2010 then the present reconfiguration (subdivision) approval will lapse and the land will formally return to Rural 1 zoning with all of the implications mentioned above.

Terry Spackman said...

Yes, this is good news.

But is this not "Closing the Door After the Horse Has Bolted".

I still insist the Reef Cove development was a Scam.
No one in their right mind would build a home at the bottom of a steep, unstable, hillslope.
A member of the survey team told me they had called it "False Hope",
to build a Pole Home would be like playing "skittles".

Golders recomended a geotec survey of the area above the site because this was obvious.

That would have been the sensible and responcible thing to do, especialy as a firm like Golders recomended it.
But to do that would have stopped it dead.

Why didn't Peter Tabulo follow Golders recomendation?
Why didn't he insist the the operational works permit conditions be complied with? He could have done both but didn't, and now tax payers and rate payers are sadled with a horendous expensive mess to clean up.

Quentin Chou said...

Thank you Denis. It does appear to offer a glimmer of hope. And of course it was a scam - facilitated by the Kevin Byrne Council, the smelly leftovers of which are still there.

Bring back KB said...

Hang on a minute, you're pinning this on KB ?
And I guess you disregard all the other successful developments in town that helped to make happen.
If you want to live in a hippie commune, move to Kuranda.

KB brought us jobs and good fortune, and I can't wait till he's mayor again so we can truely enter another 'golden era'

Bring back the stocks said...

I remember when KB became Mayor of Cairns after Tom Pyne retired. The first thing he did was sack the CEO, followed by any other staff member who disagreed with his pro-development perspective. I remember talking with staff who were literally terrified that they would come in for the Byrne bullying treatment – standing over them at their desk screaming about the professional decisions they made.

In the first couple of years we saw an exodus of qualified staff. Anyone who could get a job elsewhere did so, and Cairns was left with planners and organisers whose chief skill was bum-licking obedience to the chief drunk. Yes Peter Tabulo, I mean you.

Noel Briggs has gone now, thank goodness, but it will take at least five years to re-build a decent Council staff. Thanks to Margaret Cockroach.

I reckon we should bring back the stocks for lying politicians and incompetent bureaucrats. I reckon we could charge admission for anyone who wanted to throw rotten eggs and tomatoes at Cochrane and Tabulo. I’d pay $100 for the chance.