Harry Triguboff's Meriton fails to secure Little Bay high-rise approval
Harry Tribugoff's Meriton Apartments Group has failed to secure approval for a high-rise at its Little Bay development site.
The controversial plan was to build 1900 high-rise apartments in around 20 buildings up to 17 stories.
The plans have been rejected by Randwick Council after the Randwick Local Planning Panel unanimously rejected the Meriton planning proposal.
There was opposition from Save Little Bay, which has more than 2075 followers on Facebook.
"This was a crushing defeat for Meriton," a spokesperson Antony Gould advised.
"Their proposal has been shredded to pieces by council, by the experts, by the community.
"They look like plans from the “old days”: out of touch, out of place, out of sync."
Save Little Bay anticipates Meriton will "refuse to hear the message" and seek to push their proposal through at State level.
Meriton bagged the 11 hectare waterside residential development site set in Sydney’s coastal eastern for $245 million in 2017.
The site had been marketed as “a dream site for developers; a massive 11 hectares of luxury, high end masterplan-approved land”.
The site had approved masterplans for a combination of single-lot housing, town houses and luxury apartments.
All remediation, site works, roads, park landscaping and infrastructure had been completed, including amenities such as water, electricity and gas.
Meriton edged out Chinese developer Country Garden for the site.
Gould noted Meriton's gamble had not paid off.
"The light rail will not come here, the Malabar Metro is on a back shelf until other Metro projects are completed, the jail is unlikely to move anywhere,' Gould said.
"The ludicrous number of dwellings they are asking for has created a groundswell of resentment towards Meriton, not just in Little Bay but throughout Sydney through the various publications that have labelled this proposal obscene.
"It’s over seven times the dwellings, people and traffic of the original masterplan," he noted.