Meeting Minutes
Community Planning Team Meeting 6
Chermside Centre Neighbourhood Plan
Meeting DetailsDate:
/ 27 May 2010Time: / 6.00pm to 8.00pm
Location: / Long Tan Room, Kedron Wavell Services Club (KWSC)
Attendees
Councillors: Cr Flesser, Councillor for Northgate Ward; Cr Wyndham, Councillor for McDowall Ward.
Community Planning Team (CPT) Members: 8 attendees
Apologies:Cr King, Councillor for Marchant Ward.
Council Officers: Mark Leary, Kelly Stacey, Llewellyn Batson, Laurelle Muir, Rosie Barry, Paul Songhurst, Rob Knottenbeld, Tabitha Goodreid and Lisa Edgerton.
Discussion Details
1.Welcome and agenda
The Community Planning Team Meeting 6 opened at 6.05pm.
Llewellyn welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked everyone for coming.
He acknowledged the traditional land owners.
He advised that he is managing the community engagement activities for the Chermside Centre NP project while Brett Roland (Community Development Services) is on leave.
2.Introduction
Llewellyn introduced the program for the evening.
3.Recap of last session
Mark thanked everyone for their attendance. He advised that the minutes from the last meeting (CPT meeting 5 on 20 May) would be sent out with the minutes from CPT meeting 6.
The purpose of this evening is to hear from Council representatives from Urban Design, Traffic and Transport and Parks and Community Facilities.
During the group activities at last week’s CPT meeting 5, numerous comments were recorded forthe four Chermside areas that were reviewed at the tables.Identified issuesincluded:
-Connections to local roads, and issues such as pedestrian safety and practicality.
-Locations and need for residential development, much improved access and consideration of parking due to capacity of local streets.
4.Presentation by Urban Design
Tabitha, from Urban Design, presented on built form and urban design elements.
(Tabitha) Urban design is concerned with building design, spaces between buildings, footpaths and open space relationships.
When designing a building residential, thequalities that need to be considered are:
-Bulk and form – tall and narrow, or short and squat.
-Orientation of the building on the block.
-Subtropical design is very important - landscape and balconies (large balconies, shutters, big roofs).
-Deep planting – this is a term used in Brisbane City Council (BCC)regarding a tree that is planted in the ground rather than on top of car parks or other structures.
When designing workplaces and commercial buildings, the qualities that need to be considered are:
-Finding a balance between buildings, basement car parks and deep planting.
-Mixed uses – commercial, workplaces and residential.
-Public transport connections – how we design public spaces to access public transport.
-Workplace and commercial – delivery, loading, waste and car parking – looks at how we can provide for vehicles in the area. How do they interface with pedestrians?
Things to consider for streets and public spaces:
-Building transition – soft and hard edges.
-Space between buildings, footpaths, parks, etc.
-How are these spaces treated?
-How much pavement, width of footpaths, lighting, safety?
-How does the building interact with the space?
Built form jargon:
-development ratios
-building types
-gross floor area
-plot ratios
Up to 3 storeys – low density
5 storeys – medium density
9+ storeys – high density
5.Presentation by Traffic and Transport
Rob presented on issues surrounding Traffic and Transport.
(Rob) General:
-The Traffic and Transport Branch managesBrisbane’s transport network for all transport modes – integrating one network.
-Planning of future network improvements as expressed in The Transport Plan for Brisbane 2008 -2026.
-Working with the State Government to integrate planning – including busways, State controlled networks and area wide transport corridor studies.
-Working with the whole of Council to achieve the best transport outcomes for Neighbourhood and Urban Renewal Plans.
-Investigating local traffic and safety concerns including parking, crossing roads and access to public transport.
-Recommending appropriate transport solutions through Council planning processes.
-There is a delivery arm called theMajor Infrastructure Projects Office (MIPO) which looks after major infrastructure such as bridges and tunnels.
Some of the challenges for Chermside:
-Managing future transport needs in harmony with growth.
-Pedestrian and cycle movements.
-Road safety, including crossing roads.
-Public transport, connectivity and servicing.
-Access to parks, recreation and community facilities.
-Parking – availability and management of existing and future demand.
-Transport and traffic impacts associated with developments.
-Alignment with State Government planning projects.
-Traffic capacity and management.
Responses to local issues and growth - issues such as road capacity, safety andparking:
-Corridor improvements - route examination, identifying corridor improvement works for all transport modes and possible improvements for future budget programs.
-Intersection improvements – reviewing intersection creation and identifying suitable improvement treatments such as ‘signs and lines’, kerb build-outs, small/local roundabouts or future minor/major upgrades.
-Local Area Traffic Management (LATM) – area-wide investigation to determine warrants to list streets for future staged LATM implementation program.
-Parking – enforcement of road rules and regulations.
-Developing new policies and enforcing measures in response to growth.
Responding to Neighbourhood Plan issues:
-Coordinating planning with the State projects, including:
- Northern Busway project
- North Brisbane Area Transport Network Strategy – includes Stafford Road and other northern roads such as Sandgate Road to Webster Road
- Investigating the future of Gympie Road
- Translink network planning and operational improvements (includes bus routing and services).
-Parking - assessment of parking requirements in Centre and residential area; new parking policies.
-Future transport network planning - focused towards the promotion of sustainable transport modes and road network improvement in support of growth.
6.Presentation by Parks and Community Facilities
Paul Songhurst, Open Space Planner, responsible for parks, open spaces and facilities, displayed a map showing parks and facilities in the Chermside area.
(Paul) The Chermside Neighbourhood Plan is well served with lots of parks – for example Marchant Park, Bradbury Park and 7th Brigade Park.
Considerations of the size and proximity of parks to where people live, work and play – ideally parks are five minutes walk from homes.
Looking at the relationship of the parks with other key attractors, employment nodes and facilities such as schools, hospitals, etc.
What facilities are available – including informaluse parks?
There is quite a lot of open public space within a two kilometre radius.
But with new development, need to look at opportunities to fill in missing gaps.
Sports parks – Chermside area is well serviced with Marchant Park and 7th Brigade Park and the northern part of Bradbury Park.
Key open space corridors play a significant role in how we work, live and play – support active transport (cycling and walking) throughout the area.
Map showing proposed greenways in the area.
There are a number of possible initiatives we can unpack through this planning process.
Opportunities that exist given the substantial amount of park space in the areas. Key thing to improve will be the connection between these existing parks, and improving the pedestrian/streetscape qualities.
Maintaining existing dedicated park areas, whilefilling in park ‘gaps’ with new development opportunities, for example, acquiring more parkland space, or upgrading parks and open space to improve ‘useability’.
Opportunity to co-locate park and community facilities in precincts, including co-location of community facilities with potential futurebusway locations.
8.Panel Discussion
Q. What is the forward thinking for dealing with Gympie Road during peak hour?
A. Gympie Road is not a Council controlled road. We don’t want to make it wider. There is a bigger study area – Stafford Road, Maundrell Tce, investigating the impact on effect of busway on Gympie Road, and the traffic volume implications. Sacrificing other traffic issues in local streets. Looking at growth by 2026 or 2030 and how traffic will be dealt with. There are lots of ways the traffic issues can be managed and this can be manipulated in modelling. Unable to advise what the future will be. There will be minimal widening of Gympie Road. Also looking at facilities for cyclists.
Q. What about flyovers?
A. This is being considered at however cost is an issue. This will be a bigger impact on land.
Q. Need to look at east-west access to Gympie Road.
A. This is being addressed in the study already mentioned. Funding will have to come from Federal Government, State Government or BCC. Modelling – looking at the traffic impacts on Chermside - is being done to 2031 (there is a traffic study currently underway as part of the Chermside Centre NP project). Consideration is for the smaller picture as well as the larger picture.
Q. With future planning are you looking at east-west? Concerns at the moment with people rat running.
A. This is part of the traffic study package. We are also working with the State Government. If things are happening on Gympie Road, keep to Stafford Road, Rode Road and Hamilton Road. Could look at traffic calming.
Q. We’ve heard of a few concepts in relation to the busway and the busway stops appear to be to the western side of Gympie Road. People living on east side will have to cross Gympie Road. What is the logic?
A. One consideration is for servicing both the hospital and Westfield with frequent services. Available space in the road corridor itself is another issue and to get to thesedestinations, the alignment does not want to make too many transitions and turnsleft to right. If you don’t want to catch bus from the busway the other existing bus routes and services will remain available (for example, along Gympie Road).
Q. People from Westfield will have to cross Gympie Road to catch buses on the busway.
A. Indicative thinking on the busway is to keep it on one side of the road and marrying it with the hospital this emphasizes the western side. If Gympie Road is developed into a subtropical boulevard there will be better crossing facilities to the busway. The bigger future is to have separation of transport modes, for safety, efficiency and amenity considerations. This needs to be integrated with buildings and land use and bus station and other things being looked at. There are lots of different options. Impact on the land has to be taken into account.
Q. (Councillor Flesser) Paul, one of your slides is on greenways. Where is planning up to for greenways?
A. Broadly speaking the greenways plan is a broad concept and the delivery of that will be a staged approach where opportunities present. The greenways are proposed future bikeways and pedestrian walkways. This can link paths with betterconnectivity. There’s nothing set in concrete, and it is indicative only at this stage.
Q. How will Bradbury Park be affected?
A. There are already uses such asscouts, guides, a bowls club and netball. Future upgrade and redevelopment opportunities acknowledge that it could remain as a cluster of facilities. There are opportunities for improving the quality of the facilities to work better together. Don’t need to encroach on existing park space to enhance facilities.
Q. Looking at proposed greenway. Future greenway indicated across Webster Road and Hamilton Road roundabout.
A. It is not a simple straightforward solution. All areas are working together to realize the best connections.It is indicative of what could happen in the future – in the next 20 years. The preliminary concept planning allows us to considerthe best solutions early on.
Q. There are problems with cyclists and pedestrians at that roundabout. Good for cars.
A. This is acknowledged.
Q. Regarding urban design, you showed low, medium and high rise development. Are we considering stock standard development or looking at something like Lutwyche?
A. The City Plan has some standard codes and sets out standard requirements e.g. open space per unit. We try to make it open plan specific to the local area and responsive to the particular environment of that area - the orientation of the streets, typical layout of the street and how this impacts on the orientation of the lot. There may be a need to make a minimum development site wider to catch the northern aspect.
We will be looking at these things for Chermside. Considerations are also given to vegetation and planting, to build on and include design considerations that enhance this. Could use large trees in front of blocks and make this part of the streetscape. There is still a lot of work to do to get to this stage – a detailed Master Plan report is being developed.
Q. Will we have the 3 standard density codes or new codes?
A. There are certain criteria (codes) within the City Plan, but the Neighbourhood Plan is able to function be exception to change thesecriteria. For example, the Lutwyche Corridor NP code takes into consideration different regulations for building height and width, and minimum site sizes. The City Plan is under review at the moment. The current provisions of the City Plan are being updated to cope with more innovative design requests.
Q. Is it normal for development to provide parking space for each unit in development?
A. Yes, there are parking provisions in the City Plan that require development to provide parking. There is a ratio for residents, visitors and other uses - a number of car parks per gross floor.
Q. On parking, there is a development of five townhouses and each is allowed one garage and three visitor parks. The garages are too narrow to bring a wheelie bin from the back to the front without moving the car or taking it through the unit. Could the width of the garage be specified in future?
A. That is a poor design outcome. It depends on the development. We have more control over larger scale developments. There are standard car parking widths.
Q. How long does it take for Council’s standard to come into force?
A. Not all things fall under the City Plan. It could come under the building code. We should consider how we can improve things so this doesn’t happen in the future.
Q. CPT member asked if Tabitha could speak about common basement parking versus podium parking for medium – high density developments.
A. Basement parking is preferred for larger buildings. It would be better to see bigger units with commercial on lower floors, than car parks. Things such as underground services constraints, engineering constraints and flooding will prohibit basement parking. Need to look at other alternatives that will still enhance the streetscape. Shared driveways would be good to lessen the number of driveway crossings. There are lots of complexities with car parking.
Q. Unit development locally (for example, Playfield Street) didn’t provide enough car parking which has impacted on facilities near Kedron Wavell Services Club and the library / pool.
A. We are living with the growing pains of a city that is trying to get better public transport, but we also have a city where people are still driving. This could take another couple of decades. Providing more car parks isn’t a good solution.
Q. On the greenway map there is an urban common. Could you please explain what this is?
A. An urban common is lacking inChermside currently. There is a suggestion for an urban common to function as more of a plaza space - a place where you could have community events. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a soft park space. It could be a hard park space like a traditional town square.
The proposed site on the plan is indicative only. It’s an area where there could be unit development around it. This is a site for an urban common. It could be used by workers, unit residents, etc. Lookingfor open space solutions - can we get a space of a certain size so people can come outside and enjoy the open space? Could be integrated with cafes, etc? We are learning how to do it – Woolloongabba is an example.
Q. It needs to be close to developments.
A. Agreed. If planning an activity area, this needs to be considered then.
Llewellyn thanked Paul, Ron and Tabitha for their input.
The meeting had a 10 minute break.
9.Urban Design Case Study
Tabitha explained theurban design case study and the activity that the groups would undertake. Maps were provided on each table. The groups were asked to do two exercises considering the complexity of designing for a site in terms of the urban design elements discussed tonight (e.g. building heights, stepping down, overshadowing, interface, parking, driveway access, vehicle circulation, on-site and off-site car parking, pedestrian through access, deep planted buffers etc). The groups were asked to look at (1) a residential case study first; and (2)a commercial and residential (mixed-use development) case study.