The park on the corner of Abercrombie and Shepherd Streets is a well loved and heavily used pocket park in the heart of Darlington. The park provides local residents, families, university students and workers from nearby businesses with access to vital green space.
As part of the City’s ongoing commitment to renew important small parks across our Local Government Area, the project will provide quality open space for the whole community to enjoy.
A key element of the park is the existing playground. The City plans to replace the equipment with an exciting recreation facility for children up to 12 years old. The park also provides an important place for dog owners to currently exercise their pets off leash after 6.00pm.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

We are considering the following renewal options:
Park structure –
• improved access from Abercrombie Street
• large usable grass areas
• increased shade
• new trees.
Park facilities –
• bigger playground area with a broader range of equipment
• new trees and plants
• new park furniture.

PROJECT TIMELINE

Community consultation: November – December 2008

Early 2009

Early 2009

Construction: Mid 2009

For wet weather information call 9265 9333.

The proposal contains some significant changes from Bridge’s initial presentation to REDWatch on 2 March 2023. Bridge have dropped the 100 proposed private apartments from the scheme  and are now proposing only social and affordable housing on the site in addition to a new PCYC, Bridge’s offices and 11 disability / carer units. The application states that if financing for the affordable housing does not eventuate they will submit a new DA. The current estimated development cost is $213,606,722 (excluding GST).

There is no information we can see that details what kind of affordable housing is proposed. The initial proposal contained both affordable housing linked to income as well as discount off market housing which was only proposed to be affordable for 10 years.

The documents propose an increase of 24 units on the site to bring the total to 355. The 100 private units have been replaced by 77 extra affordable and 47 extra social. Given that Homes NSW only required 100 units on the site it is not clear if the extra 47 will be part of the Homes deal or if Bridge Housing will own and operate some themselves. The initial proposal was that the Homes NSW social housing units would be operated by the Waterloo successful tendering. As the consortium Bridge was part of withdrew from the Waterloo tender, there is the possibility that while Bridge might build these Units they may now be operated by the successful Waterloo tender.

The proposal includes an application (Appendix E) for a slight increase in height over the edge of one building as well as a request for additional floor space allowance (Appendix F). The figures on the latter are not clear due to the need to juggle site FSR’s of 1.5:1, allowance for the community facility 0.57:1), a 10% design excellence allowance and a BASIX water allowance (0.15:1) that the says the site does not meet. The FSR requested is 2.442:1 which the application says is an increase of 6.75% if they had met the BASIX targets.

Obviously REDWatch has not had a chance to go through the documents in detail and we will approach Bridge for clarification and see if we can arrange a community meeting where Bridge can brief the community on their proposal and ask any questions. The short exhibition time means that it falls between our November AGM tonight and the first Thursday in December.

Below is our list of the Documents for SSD-51274973 600-660 Elizabeth Street, Redfern - Mixed Use. in order so they match those in the Environment Impact Statement:

More information will be added as more information becomes available.