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Some Issues for consideration in the Waterloo South Concept Plan
A quick guide to some things you might want to consider commenting on
Need vs money in the delivery of community facilities
What will Council’s Waterloo Community Facility deliver?
Will there be NGO Community Facilities in Waterloo South?
The continuing need for Health Facilities in Waterloo South
For Profit v Not-for-Profit Centre based child care
What are the alternative Education Establishments and creative industries
Other non-residential floor space - issues like low-cost goods and services
The Concept Plan and the Non-Residential Space Dilemma
What should the public benefit be from the Waterloo South redevelopment?
Tree Cover – tree retention and new deep soil plantings
About the Consultation
From 27 October to early December 2025 Homes NSW and the Stockland Consortium will undertake community consultations about the future shape of Waterloo South. Details of events planned as part of this consultation can be found on the development website at www.waterloorenewal.com.au
Planning NSW has raised a number of issues and studies that the Consortium needs to address and hence all these areas are open for community input. Following this pre-lodgement consultation Stockland will submit its plan and proposed changes to Planning NSW for public exhibition to seek approval for planning rule changes, a Waterloo South Concept Plan, Changes to the Design Guide, Changes to Design Excellence and produce a plan to manage the social impacts of the redevelopment.
Lots of issues are emerging from the Scoping Proposal for the Rezoning and Concept SSDA, the Waterloo South People and Place Plan and issues around potential social impacts. The release of the Draft Concept Plan by Stockland in late October 2025 will add to issues to be considered.
REDWatch has produced a REDWatch primer for Waterloo South Concept Plan and Rezoning Consultation – October 2025 which attempts to summarise some of the complex planning background that Stockland and consultations can address as well as what we have heard from the Stockland Consortium about the changes they want to make and the changes in undertakings from Homes NSW in its Waterloo People and Place Plan. This document includes a summary of Scoping: What Changes do Stockland want to make? and REDWatch concerns on final Waterloo South People and Place Plan based on People and Place Recommendations 2025 Changes from 2024 Draft.
Each of these documents raise issues for the consultation that REDWatch has highlighted but it has not dealt with them in detail. This document is more issues based. We will also add issues as they arise to this document and also in our emails to members and supporters. To join the REDWatch email list send your email address to mail@redwatch.org.au
A quick guide to some things you might want to consider commenting on
It is important to build on the planning that has gone before rather than go over old ground unless the earlier planning missed things important to the community.
In preparing for the consultation, you may want to think about:
- Are there important things that were no taken up in earlier planning? e.g. bike path and community centre locations etc
- Are the changes to accommodate the extra floor space reasonable and do they deliver improved outcomes? e.g. changes in heights, building footprints, tree cover impact etc
- Will the other changes Homes NSW and Stockland have proposed deliver better community outcomes than what was earlier proposed? e.g. Should there be a health facility and what should it provide or should it be replaced by “educational establishments”; will the removal of the 2022 design excellence provisions from social and affordable housing still result in great outcomes or should silver liveable apartment standard and accessible car parking for market apartment be reduced? For the full list of proposed changes see Scoping: What Changes do Stockland want to make?
- What should be provided in the no less than 5,000sqm set aside for community facilities (2,400 already allocated to Council), health facilities (2,000 sqm proposed in 2022) and centre-based childcare facilities? Should “education establishments” be also added as a use for this space?
- What should be provided in the no less than 7,000sqm set aside for other non-residential uses such as shops to service the local community including low-income options, creative enterprises and social enterprises?
- How do we make public spaces safer than they are at the moment and deal with public activities that disrupt others quite enjoyment of their homes or create concern in parts of the community such as public drinking
- Are the trees proposed to be retained adequate? Is there a way to deliver the development and retain more tree cover? Is the space allocated for future tree planning sufficient to provide the tree cover needed to mitigate high summer heat?
- What possible social impacts, both good and bad, do you see from the redevelopment and what can be done to get the best of the benefits and deal with the impacts that will be felt by some people?
Community Facilities
The 2022 rezoning specified that “at least 5,000m2 of the gross floor area of all buildings on the land will be used for the purposes of one or more of the following - (i) centre-based child care facilities, (ii) community facilities, (iii) health services facilities”. The Consortium has proposed that “Educational Establishment” possibly to replace “health service facilities” be added to this list and also it made reference to “Creative Industries” being added to premises considered active use for ground floor active street frontages. The community facility figure does not include the parks or what could be built on them.
Stockland in the Scoping Proposal says it wants to make a change to the “definition of community facilities”. It has not explained the change it wants to make.
What should go into these spaces is an active consideration for the Stockland Concept Plan and should be driven by community input about what facilities it wants to see. Below we have unpacked some questions about facilities.
Need vs money in the delivery of community facilities
Of the no less than 5,000sqm for community facilities, childcare and health facilities Council is already allocated 2,400sqm for community facilities. This gets delivered at no cost to Council as part of the Voluntary Planning Agreement that also provides two parks to council. As yet Council does not know what it will do with this space. This leaves remaining 2,600sqm for other uses. Originally this was divided up as 2,000sqm for a healthcare facility and 600sqm expected to be used for a childcare centre providing for about 45 places. Any new community facilities (say run by an NGO) would either eat into these spaces or into other non-residential uses.
While community facilities need to be controlled by a Council or a not-for-profit, childcare facilities can go to commercial entities and for the health facility it can be a state government operation or a commercial entity. This results in developers going for uses that can pay commercial rents rather than peppercorn not-for-profit uses or for government facilities where funding has not been guaranteed. It seems that Homes NSW decided to drop providing a health facility from Waterloo South because Sydney Local Health District (SLHD) did not have approved funding for such a facility.
The bottom line is that not-for-profit’s looking for places to run programs or subsidised childcare and government bodies like SLHD and the Federal Public Health Network (PHN) all have to compete with possible more commercial alternatives.
The consultation process claims this is about what is needed as far as facilities are concerned but we see in the attempt to ditch the health facility it is more about the money to be made from different parts of the development rather than need.
What will Council’s Waterloo Community Facility deliver?
The final Voluntary Planning Agreement (VPA) between Council, Homes NSW and the Department of Planning shows Council with facilities at two locations in Waterloo South. This is a change from the rezoning conversations where only one site was talked about which was opposite the small park in the Stage 1 development site.
Under the VPA the developer is to deliver to Council 2,400sqm of space for community facilities, however apparently the site opposite the small park can only accommodate 800sqm so the remaining 1600sqm has to be delivered elsewhere. Council has suggested the second centre be on a site in Cooper Street. Both proposed sites are in stand-alone buildings that could be transferred to Council rather than run under a strata arrangement. The final location will need to be agreed between Stockland and Council and shown in the Concept Plan.
We have no idea what Council plans to do with these two centres and more importantly how, or if, it plans to run them. Council has yet to decide. Council uses three models for its community facilities, some are unstaffed and are by bookings only, others are staffed and run by Council itself while others are passed over to another organisation to run rather than council. Council may need to come up with a different model for Waterloo as it had to do for the Redfern Community Centre which is targeted to the Aboriginal community.
Will the new centre be a sport and recreation type centre with paid for yoga, arts spaces, or will it also deliver counselling and support services that Council centres normally don’t supply? Ideally, we would like to know what Council is planning as this impacts what other facilities might ask for. We can’t really wait the two years that Stockland need to give Council for Council to work out what it needs them to deliver, to answer these questions.
Will there be NGO Community Facilities in Waterloo South?
With the community facilities being handed to Council there is little likelihood of there being additional space made available to Not-for-Profit services who are unable to pay commercial rents. Most NGOs in the area operate from premises owned by Council or Homes NSW that are not tailored for the services they provide. Non-Government human service providers are not funded in their grants to cover rent, hence the need for peppercorn rent arrangements to allow them to provide services.
In the 2022 rezoning Planning NSW acting as the plan maker and found “the proposal is informed by a social baseline study which outlines the social infrastructure needs for Waterloo South.” One of the major flaws in the earlier Waterloo social baseline / community facilities study was that while it assessed the existence of services, it did not assess if the properties that they operated from were fit for purpose and many are not.
People should continue to state the need even if it is difficult to see low-cost space being provided up against those that can pay commercial rents. It might help Council work out what it does in its space if nothing else and Council may provide some spaces for services to operate from.
The continuing need for Health Facilities in Waterloo South
Both Homes NSW in its People and Place has removed a health facility and the Stockland Consortium Scoping Proposal says that “Either reduce area required for the nominated uses by 2,000m2 or alternatively add ‘Education Establishment’ as a use which can contribute towards the minimum 5,000m2 required”. This seems not to be based on the needs of the area for health facilities but rather that an earlier plan by Sydney Local Health District (SLHD) for a “Health One” which required Federal funding from a program that no longer operates.
The “supporting health and wellbeing” pillar of Waterloo South People and Place Plan (PDF 2.86MB) provides statistics on page 23 that clearly show a very different heath profile for those in Waterloo South to the City of Sydney. These figures do not surprise as almost all social housing allocations are based on the level of need and this includes people with medical conditions in addition to an aged cohort. This is reflected in the number of community nurses that park around the estate to provide a service to tenants.
Over time SLHD have put together a range of proposals of different sizes for a facility on or near the estate specifically aimed at better supporting public housing tenants.
- As part of the post Covid plan by Council to close Waterloo Library, SLHD wanted to put facilities in the proposed disused Library until the Library Closure was stopped by locals.
- SLHD also proposed to come into the South Eveleigh Community Building with Counterpoint as part of CBA’s search for tenants for that community space – in the end the space went to then arts group 107 and when that went bust that space has gone to fundraiser Tour de Cure rather than the proposed local community facility.
- SLHD also went into negotiations with Mirvac / John Holland about the possibility of space in the commercial building that they initially planned to build above the Waterloo Metro.
- And now as per the Waterloo Human Service Collaborative Action Plan SLHD have indicated they still want to have discussions about a medical facility within Waterloo South even though a Health One is no longer possible.
In the absence of funding for a Health One it is unlikely that SLHD will still want 2,000sqm but SLHD is just one part of the health system that interacts with public housing tenants. One of the big needs for tenants is access to bulk billing doctors and services. That part of the health system could be handled by a private doctors practice that bulk bills or could be coordinated through the federal Primary Health Network (PHN). In this area that is handled by the Central and Eastern Sydney PHN (CESPHN). Stockland in its Scoping proposal while wanting the Health One removed has flagged as a possible deliverable a “local Aboriginal health service facility”.
What needs to be pushed here is a needs-based response that might potentially involve SLHD, CESPHN, Aboriginal Health and maybe NGOs that can respond to the range of health needs in the community. The community cant determine how the funding for that might fit together but we can argue the need and that a health facility is required.
In a discussion on this topic among REDWatch members it was suggested that we should be arguing for a space that is specifically for public health and community care service provision that integrates with other health care services in the surrounding area and not necessarily tie that space to a current model of care. It was suggested it should be an adaptable physical space - what is provided out of that space will likely change over time - but it should always remain for public health and community care service provision. Not sure how the funding model works for that but it is a good community aspiration.
For Profit v Not-for-Profit Centre based child care
The 2022 rezoning determination said the Waterloo South development needs to deliver a “childcare centre providing for about 45 places, including subsidised spaces, and to be owned and operated by an organisation other than Council”. Childcare is a use that often goes to for profit providers that can pay commercial rents. It is welcome that the 2022 rezoning states a need for it to provide an unspecified number of subsidised places and this should be retained and if possible, at least a minimum specified. Competition with for profit providers means however that a not-for-profit preschool that has a focus on those that cannot pay fees is unlikely to be considered up against a for profit with a couple of subsidised places which can pay market rent. A local child care facility with that has many families on low incomes that would welcome a better home is Poet’s Corner Preschool that currently operates from the ground level at the bottom of one of Redfern’s public housing towers .
What are the alternative Education Establishments and creative industries
The Stockland consortium in its scoping proposal has argued that the space previously allocated to a medical facility could be allocated to an “educational establishments” however it has not detailed what it has in mind and this needs to be uncovered during the exhibition. The Consortium has also indicated that “creative industries” should be allowed as active street frontages. It is not clear however what these “creative industries might be” and if this might be related to community facilities or other non-residential uses. Since the demise of 107 Projects questions have been raised about how spaces for artists are best handled and Council seems to be stepping more into the running of these spaces which are not necessarily financially viable.
Other non-residential floor space - issues like low-cost goods and services
The Concept Plan and the Non-Residential Space Dilemma
The 2022 planning controls say “at least 17,000m2 of the gross floor area of all buildings on the land will be used for purposes other than residential accommodation” this includes the 5,000m2 for Community Facilities mentioned above. This leaves 12,000m2 for offices and shops. Stockland in its Scoping proposal has suggested possibly reducing this to 10,000m2 if the health facility is removed.
The 12,000sqm retail and commercial space also throws up a similar dilemma to that outlined above for community facilities. The planning proposal talks about shops and non-residential uses such as incubation and social enterprise spaces. It also talks about affordable retail and its management, as well as low-cost or free options available including spaces where community members can buy, cook and share healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food. Provision of these kind of retail and commercial spaces potentially compete with commercial retail that could use that space and provide commercial returns. Stockland has indicated it plans to initially own the retail and office space so it will be important that any mechanism for non-market spaces be on a continuing basis rather than something to activate the space while the development evolves and commercial interest in the retail and office offering emerges.
It is worrying that People and Place has removed “Provide affordable spaces for community use, local business, local creatives, entrepreneurs and startups” (5.3 2024) and replaced it with “Work with service providers to explore opportunities to assist start-up businesses and locally based entrepreneurs to build their capacity in the local area” (5.3 2025). This not only makes it a service provider problem rather than Homes NSW and the Stockland consortium’s problem it also does not commit any longer to affordable spaces.
Similarly reference to “low cost and free options” have been removed when referencing shops and community facilities in recommendation 4.9 in 2025 while and 4.10 used to say “Provide spaces where community members can buy, grow, cook and share healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food” but now is only to “Explore the provision of such spaces but has excluded grow as well as “share healthy affordable and culturally appropriate food.”
What should the public benefit be from the Waterloo South redevelopment?
Below is a list of public benefits and community infrastructure items Stockland said in its Scoping Proposal it proposes to deliver in the Stage One area. Items like a park, community facility, childcare centre and ground floor activation are required but some other items are options that compete with other things the community might like such as the earlier proposed health facility. For the consultation what do you think about these Consortium suggestions, the earlier recommendations in People and Place that have been removed. Are there any other services / uses you would like to see that would benefit social housing tenants and the new community of Waterloo South?
- Skills exchange and reemployment hub
- Social enterprise incubator
- Local Aboriginal health service facility
- Educational establishment
- A Council owned community facility and public park
- Childcare centre
- Activation of the Ground Plane with retail (particularly along George Street)
- Precinct Management Deed and place activation funding
Tree Cover – tree retention and new deep soil plantings
The 2022 rezoning requirement to include 10% floor space but not increase height means that the building will need to be bulkier and potentially take up mor land area and impact trees that previously may not have been impacted. Keeping as many trees as possible will help to keep the place cool and decrease the heat buildup. While planting trees will help years in the future it takes times for these trees to develop and provide protection. It is hence very important that people pay close attention to both what trees are down for removal as well as the reason. It is also important to look at the deep soil provisions for new trees to be able to grow. Aboriginal horticulturalist argues that there are suitable native trees that can be used in place of imported trees and have encouraged people to see new trees that are native to Australia and to the area previously.
Particular attention should be paid to planned tree removals in the Stage 1 area as it is not clear if the tree removal will happen during the demolition and clearing proposed by the consortium which is not subject to exhibition or if it is done under the basement SSDA which will be exhibited. The current concept plan stage is the place especially for conversations about trees especially in Stage 1.
Community Safety
A survey of tenants found many concerned about safety when they were outside their buildings. It is important to bring your experience to this consultation and to raise any concerns about safety. During the 2023 rezoning concern was raised about safety in the mid-block connections between housing developments. These should be looked at closely both in terms of the extent to which they allow people ways to avoid / escape potential problems, the visibility of these walkways from surrounding buildings and CCTV as well as how these spaces will be kept clean and easily accessible. So for example plantings along such walkways that obscure people from the view of others enjoying their own private open space do not provide protection for those using the walkway.
One issue raised often but which keeps being ignored is where will the street drinkers go. Thought needs to be given to locations that public drinkers can be safe in that do not threaten others. If this is not planned for then it is likely that this will be a problem in the new development in the way it is currently for many tenants. It is not sufficient to think that people will be in the big park so it will be the City of Sydney’s problem and does not need to be looked at now
Construction Impacts
It is important that all workers coming on to the public housing estate receive training in dealing with people impacted by drugs, alcohol, mental health and trauma. Work was done on this when the light rail went past Northcott and workers were better prepared to deal with people with complex issues. In contrast this did not happen on the Waterloo Metro build and there were many clashes between locals and those doing the build. In the end Mirvac John Holland needed to pay Police to be in attendance so that workers on the site felt safe to work. Stockland need to learn from the Metro experience and better handle interactions between their workers and people surrounding the development.
Vermin
One of the first impact from the Metro site clearing was a significant increase in rats in the area who had had their nests impacted and were looking for new homes. Rats have been an ongoing problem on the estate and it will be important for the Consortium, Homes NSW and Council to be quickly onto this problem during the demolition.
This document was updated by REDWatch on 24 October 2025 and will be updated further as required.
