By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
CITY Hall and national retail giants are at loggerheads over planning and development rules for a proposed Armstrong Creek Town Centre.
A four-day state planning panel hearing is hearing arguments on planning amendment 267 from high-powered legal teams for various parties including Coles and Woolworths.
The parties have assembled an array of planning, retail and engineering experts to argue the case.
The town centre precinct is 92 hectares bounded by Surf Coast Hwy and Boundary, Barwarre and Burvilles Rds.
In documents tendered to the panel, the parties are arguing over caps on retail space, the level of developer contributions and restrictive design guidelines.
Acting for Woolworths, MacroPlan Dimasi managing director of retail Tony Dimasi said restrictive design guidelines meant the retail hub was “substantially” more likely to fail.
“The design guidelines propose a highly prescriptive and inappropriate approach to the layout and design of the retail floor space,” Mr Dimasi said.
He argued the design guidelines had “little or no regard for critical elements, in particular customer comfort and convenience and economic viability”.
Imposing a shop floor-space cap of 35,000sqm, down from 40,000sqm, was “arbitrary, subjective and unduly restrictive” without any “material benefit” to other shopping centres, he said.
“It will, however, impose an unnecessary restriction on the Armstrong Creek retail core and additional costs and inconvenience for the developers at a future date.”
URBIS associate director and town planner Sarah Walbank said the amendment “inappropriately prohibits a number of land uses”.
“The design guidelines should be amended to provide greater flexibility to facilitate development in the town centre over a period of time.”
Environmental Resources Management Australia partner Stuart McGurn, for Coles, said the proposed design guidelines were “overly prescriptive”.
Experts acting for City Hall said the town centre design represented best-practice planning and urban design.
