STACKER PARKING SCRAPPED FROM HIGH RISE
The new owners of the land at 20-24 Hepburn Road have rejected council approved plans for the use of mechanical parking units in the 15 storey development. Instead will be including an extra basement to accommodate the short fall in the parking tally requirement as a result of their removal. This a wakeup call to some members of the Manningham planning arm, who had hoped, by approving the use of stacker parking, developers would be attracted to the cheaper but inferior concept thereby creating more developer interest in its high rise strategy.
According to a neighbour in close contact with the developer…….
……..they have decided to adopt conventional parking”. “Mechanical parking would have been an option if there were on-site constraints or if in a confined area but not when there was opportunity to install standard parking” Council had ignored resident objections by stating; “Council cannot, strictly speaking, assess matters that are not included in the planning scheme at the time they make their decision, accordingly no assessment was made against a specific criteria for mechanical parking”.
Excerpt from an objector submission;
“It appears that Manningham Council have quite deliberately withheld information with the express purpose of limiting objections to the 15 storey apartment proposal at 20-24 Hepburn Road by not revealing that it would be 15 storeys and the majority of its car parking would be in stacker format. The mandatory signage erected on the block and the notifications letters sent to local residents, during the advertising period, inviting public comment, did not disclose stacker parking. Although much of the area on the sign was used up by unnecessarily repeating the address there was still enough space to reveal the parking method, had Council chose to”.
4 Comments
Thankfully the new developer has shown some consideration for the environment by not adopting Car Stackers. One of the key vision objectives of this Council in seeing Doncaster Hill become a ‘Smart Energy Zone’ is supposedly to ‘minimise environmental impacts’. You can understand why we (the objectors to the Hepburn Road development) were left scratching our collective heads at the decision-makers who think that car stackers had responded positively to that aim. Councils around Australia are increasingly rejecting car stackers because of their negative impacts on the environment, yet our Council are providing developers with the perfect means to squeeze in more cars, guzzle up energy and exacerbate the traffic issues by adding to the number of cars on our roads! Car stackers are symptomatic of overdevelopment – simple as that – and the community should demand that Council develop a policy on car stackers as a matter of urgency to avoid such blatant abuse of deteriorating infrastructure and resources. This adds further proof that this short sighted Council approves first and asks questions second (or fails to ask them at all).
A.K
Hi AK,
Actually, as strange as it may seem, the stacker is more environmentally friendly than having a car idle for even just 45 seconds longer – such as the 45+ extra seconds it could take to drive down another level of car park. The stacker uses a 3kW hydraulic motor, for up to 2min (which could be powered by renewable electricity). An idling internal’ combustion engine is using fossil fuel at a minimum of 8kW. 3/8ths of 120seconds is 45.
I realise there are other factors but just because something has a high power draw doesn’t make it worse than the alternative.
Hi, Frank,
Perhaps we could put signs up asking motorists to turn their engines off while waiting up to 3 minutes to retrieve or park their vehicles in the stacker unit during busy periods. Even longer as families unload vehicles in the stacker unit itself….there are never any areas provided for waiting, loading or unloading.
Anna
It was not surprising that residents got very angry and vocal about the techniques used to push development yields beyond reasonable limits in the previous application to install mechanical parking……..it would have been bedlam.
It had been confirmed that the loading times were not the 20 seconds average as explained to councillors, but rather up to 118 seconds plus the time to get in or out and load or unload vehicles. Added to that more than 44% of currently selling vehicles would not fit ……(27.1 % SUVs and 17.1% light commercial), and you can bet there would have been a lot of cars choosing to park on the street. And in Hepburn Road there was only 25 spaces for EVERYONE.
G.W.