ACT Greens MLA, Shane Rattenbury is tabling a petition on behalf of Dickson Residents Group calling on the government to undertake comprehensive impact assessment for the Dickson Coles-DOMA multi-supermarket and multi-unit complex proposed or present a revised development application consistent with modern urbanism and sustainable design.
Dickson Residents Group spokesperson and town planning consultant Jane Goffman said “We believe that a lively urban village with a diversity of small businesses that’s easy and practical to get around make this a great place to live, work, raise families and grow older in. Of course we want to see the area upgraded and enhanced, but to do that we need to get best practice, promote innovation, and manage and mitigate the likely impacts in sensible ways.
“The current proposal would be a disaster for the area and sets a very low benchmark for all the other group centres getting ready to be upgraded – in the inner South, Belconnen, Woden, Weston Creek, and Tuggeranong.
“It would generate significant negative impacts in terms of traffic and parking, access for the elderly and disabled, for pedestrians and cyclists, and for public transport users all of whom are supposed to somehow get across two or three insanely busy and congested roads filled with cars, trucks, semi-trailers and buses to some future light rail station and interchange.
“It would create major safety problems, functionality problems, mobility and circulation problems. It would siphon trade and passing foot traffic away from surrounding open air shops, much as the Canberra Centre has sucked life out of Garema Place by capturing people inside a mall. It would produce a massive loss of income and viability for many, and quite probably the majority of existing small businesses.
“Losing the many small businesses that make the place tick would mean losing the heart and soul of the centre. If we’re not careful what we’ll end up with is yet another sterile concrete jungle made up of megamonoliths, surrounded by heavily congested roads, filled with the same anonymous franchises you see everywhere with the three major supermarket industry players dragging all the traffic to one overloaded funnel point.
“It would violate every one of the principles set out in the master plan, thumb its nose at the many Codes within the Territory Plan, and breach the very important heritage buffer that surrounds Dickson Library that the National Trust has voiced strong concerns about.
“We can do a great deal better than this, and the fact is we expect more of developers in 2015 than we did thirty or forty years ago. It’s time for the government to prove they’re serious about a compact sustainable city and get on with it, either do a proper impact assessment or refuse this development application and demand plans that showcase the very best in modern urbanism and sustainable design” Ms Goffman concluded.
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