Over the past three years residents of Jindabyne have submitted feedback for the Go Jindabyne master plan and then the 40 year vision of the Snowy Mountains Special Activation Precinct (SAP).
The SAP draft masterplan and the multitude of accompanying documents were on public exhibition in winter 2021 and all interested people were encouraged to submit feedback. In addition, the SAP planning team have engaged with selected community groups to gauge specific feedback.
Everyone awaits the final masterplan which is expected to be released in later June. Naturally everyone hopes the planning team have listened to the community for their final plan.
The Jindabyne East Residents Committee feel as though their views and ideas have not been taken on board by the planning team as much as they would have liked. Even though the master plan has not been finalised yet, they feel strongly about their neighbourhood and have voiced their opinion by way of a letter to the Snowy Mountains Magazine.
These views and opinions below are written by the Jindabyne East Residents Committee on behalf of the East Jindabyne community.
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Letter to the editor
Give us the village we want!
It is the same old story… and as dispiriting as ever.
A new development is in the wind. Consultation is promised. Hundreds of hours are spent. Hundreds of good ideas are generated by welcoming locals. Plans are drawn up, decisions made. And the outcome – predictably – is one that shows an almost complete disregard for any views or ideas presented by those very locals who have been promised full consultation.
The only surprising thing is why we are surprised in the least. Again, it is the same old story.
But this time, let’s not allow the same old story to have the same old ending – yet another new development that shows little regard for the wishes and local wisdom of residents, little regard for the environment, little regard for the uniquely beautiful setting of our lake and mountains. And indeed, no regard, once the cash is handed over, for the lifestyle and well-being of those very families who will end up living in yet another messed-up suburb.
Consider. If you choose to come and live by a lake with views across to a superb mountain range which changes every hour with the ebb and flow of light and shade, do you want three-storey apartments between you and the view? I don’t think so.
And yet this is just one of the bright ideas shown on the off-the-shelf plan that the SAP planners have proposed, totally ignoring the suggestions of locals and the demands of common-sense. Even a seven-year old knows that it makes sense for the tall people to stand at the back because they can see over the heads of the littlies in front.
Go on. Have a look at the plan. See those red blocks (images 2 and 3 below) between the main housing and the park. They are three storey apartments. The houses built further inland might as well be in Parramatta for all the view they will get.
Consider again. If you choose to come and live by a lake, wouldn’t you like to be able to walk down to the lake-shore from your house… and have your neighbours have the same advantage? Or do you think it okay to have to walk four or five blocks to find an access point to a lake that is just down the hill? How hard is it to create a green reserve through the centre of the village that allows any resident, no matter which house they live in, to stroll down to the lake’s edge of an evening?
That was the proposal suggested by the thoughtful residents of East Jindabyne. That was the proposal totally ignored by the developers after their so-called consultation process. It is short-sighted in the extreme, not to mention insulting to the residents… and it reveals only too clearly that this whole consultation was never anything more than a sham process.
The greatest pity is that this proposed development has the potential to be truly stunning. Instead of yet another botched sprawl, this East Jindabyne village could be a model of its kind. Look at that canvas backdrop! Look at the willingness of current residents to embrace progress of this sort – when it would be so easy to resort to grumpy and defensive nimbyism. Look at the thoughtfulness and imagination shown already by so many people. Look at the community facilities the plan DOES offer and ask how easy will it be to get to them?
But it’s no good asking the developers to deliver SAP a plan for the people. As usual – same old story – their view is blocked by huge dollar signs. And unless we do something about it, we - I am afraid – are in for yet another rash of poorly planned, cheap, unimaginative housing that shows not even a skerrick of grace, liveability or vision.
Read on … and then act! Let your voice be heard on social media. Tell the planners to think again.
We, the community of East Jindabyne, are permanent residents who run businesses, provide services and volunteer widely for the good of the Jindabyne community. We have chosen East Jindabyne to bring up our families, invest our money in and retire to because of the lifestyle it offers – relaxed, healthy, outdoor and safe – against a very special scenic back-drop and wide open lakeshore for all to freely enjoy.
We welcome the SAP wholeheartedly
It can deliver the strategic town plan that Council has not. It gives us the chance to fix the planning mistakes of the past in East Jindabyne. It places us - the permanent residents – at the centre of its success because we are the ones who will deliver the year-round tourist economy that is the SAP’s main goal.
We were heard
From Day One of ‘Go Jindabyne’, and then later the SAP, we avidly engaged with the planning team. Throughout, they listened, understood, responded and affirmed.
We conveyed aspirations of a family-friendly, socially cohesive and contented village that could sustain the growing permanent workforce of Jindabyne. We welcomed our future. We advocated for green space, pedestrian connectivity, lake foreshore access, adequate road networks, and - above all - a residential development plan that prioritises community building over developer profit.
We welcomed the development on the large parcel of vacant land at the centre of East Jindabyne as it provides the perfect opportunity to re-plan our village to fit our wants and needs.
We were ignored
When the draft SAP Master Plan was released, it was with dismay that we found it resembles an off-the-shelf plan of suburbia designed to maximise the number of urban lots and minimise development costs.
Nearly all of the elevated land is to be built on, this at the expense of pedestrian connectivity, visual impact, open space and biodiversity. It proposes small lot sizes across the entire residential area. It proposes three storey tourism development on the lakefront.
Its road layout takes little account of the unique lakeside setting of East Jindabyne that demands easy pedestrian access to the foreshore by all residents. It has little regard for who we are as a community. It does not address the major planning issues in the rest of East Jindabyne.
In response
In response, we submitted an alternative plan (see below) that prioritises lake access, green space, pedestrian and cycling connectivity, and diversity of housing types that would build community.
But it appears this was in vain: we have been told that the final version of SAP’s plan is little different to the original. What we are getting is a standard suburban layout with blanket R1 (small lot) zoning and a street layout that blocks pedestrian access to the lake foreshore.
This is not the ‘lifestyle village’ espoused in the SAP objectives that we had hoped for. We know what it will look like because we already have it in the Old Kosciuszko Road subdivision - a tangled mess of cheek-by-jowl houses that sacrifices pedestrian connectivity, setbacks, street landscaping, trees and off-street parking to developer profit.
The imbalance of power
We are not surprised at how this has panned out. The developers have the inside track on us. We know this because, despite appeals to wait for the Go Jindabyne plan, Snowy Hydro quietly sold the East Jindabyne land to a developer. We know this also because, in February of this year, the developer through the SAP people convinced Council and the Crown Lands Department to sell the Crown road easement (public land providing foreshore access!) to allow development over it. And we know it because, on the eve of release of the draft SAP plan, a new version of the plan for East Jindabyne - one with expanded lot yield to the developer - was precipitously inserted into the document.
So why not give us the village we want?
We want a village that retains a natural semi-rural environment in which we can breathe and relax. Why should this vacant land and the character of our existing village be spoiled by medium and high density suburbia?
The SAP team have told us they are constrained by the development lots they need to deliver from the small amount of available land suitable for residential development. To us, this does not ring true: there is ample land on the other side of the highway to East Jindabyne (already sub-divided into smaller rural lots) that is ideal for residential development, as is land adjoining Kalkite that, inexplicably, was likewise frozen out of the SAP’s sphere.
Does the SAP team really believe that the land parcels they have focused on will cater for the 40 years of the plan? We think that East Jindabyne is paying the price of SAP’s inexplicable choice to limit its scope. We do not know what goes on behind closed doors but suspect we are casualties of the power of money over community values and lack of a real voice for communities in government decision-making.
The SAP team have also told us that the Council wants to minimise the amount of green space to maintain. This is a fair argument given Council’s current cash-strapped status. But a green corridor can be low maintenance once established, paid for from the increased rates base arising from the development, or funded by the developer (who will return dividends in higher land values).
And, unlike the two isolated pocket handkerchief-sized parks in the middle of the urban mass proposed in the SAP’s plan (see image 2 and 3), the central green corridor we propose (image 1) would provide the function (pedestrian and ecological connectivity) Council needs in order to justify maintaining.
Or, could it simply be that our ‘meeting of the minds’ with the frontline SAP planners simply got lost in translation when the task was outsourced to Sydney-side consultants? We hope not, given the enormous bill.
But we also hope so too because this would leave open the possibility for the SAP team to create a plan that truly represents the wishes of the community. So, before it gets set in concrete, we make one last appeal to our Planning Masters: design us a village that meets the most fundamental of its objectives, namely, that we, the people of East Jindabyne, want to live in it.
Written by Jindabyne East Residents Committee on behalf of the East Jindabyne community
East Jindabyne Residents Committee proposed plan (Image 1 above). The residents propose:
1. A green corridor through the centre that would allow all residents in the new development, plus those in the existing village, easy pedestrian access to the lake foreshore. This feature would also improve visual impact by exchanging treeline for built skyline.
2. A diversity of housing types - large lots suitable for families (low-rise, view-sharing) in the main area (4A), small lots (e.g. townhouses) nearer the highway (Area 4B) and an area suitable for senior resident accommodation near the community hub and lakeside park.
3. A ring-road (instead of ridgetop road) to serve the all residential areas as well as provide visitors with access to the full extent of the green lakeside space.
4. Upgraded delivery road infrastructure including a link road from East Jindabyne to Tyrolean to improve traffic and fire safety, and a re-worked intersection of Jerrara Drive and the highway. Like the SAP plan, the residents also prioritise provision of community facilities (boat ramp, picnic area, shady park, commercial hub for pop-ups, cafe, minimart).
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Below - Image 2 and 3 are Artist impressions from the SAP draft master plan East Jindabyne Alternative Plan document.
East Jindabyne Residents Committee's view of the The SAP’s plan. It proposes three-storey accommodation right at the lake-side park, limited lake access by road, pedestrian lake access via an internal residential road, ridgetop development, fragmented green space, and small lots at the front and large lots at the back.
Image 4 - The land in question at East Jindabyne (brown area). Note this is an older image and does not show recent East Jindabyne houses near Old Kosciuszko Road near inlet.