building height

Coles Lindfield Redevelopment

Coles Redevelopment - View from corner of Pacific Highway and Balfour St

Coles Lindfield is currently located on the corner of the Pacific Highway and 1 Balfour Street Lindfield. In May 2018 they appealed their development application in order to take it to the Sydney North Planning Panel. In August 2019 their appeal was determined to be successful, and so the development will go ahead. We wanted to capture the summary of the information for the residents of Lindfield.

The development will commence in 2 phases. The first phase will see the construction of a new Balfour Lane adjacent to the school boundary in order to guarantee access to the Holy Family School and Church. The second phase will involve the demolition of the Coles site, carpark and old Balfour Lane, with the exception of a heritage building and electrical substation. This will create a large construction area for the new development.

The new development will contain double the number of carpark spaces, 249 retail parking spaces over 2 levels and 73 residential parking spaces. The new supermarket will also be approximately double the size of the current store; ~4500m2 in total floor area, retaining Liqourland and adding a cafe. The development will also include 70 new (very small) apartments above the supermarket.

Balfour Lane view of Coles redevelopment

The building height is roughly 5-6 stories plus rooftop plant, which is below the height of the Village Hub proposal. There will be two carpark entrances, one roughly at the original Balfour Lane location into LG2 and one on the western boundary (access road built in phase 1 as mentioned) that connects to LG1.

There is currently no start date for construction that we are aware of, although we hope it doesn’t clash with the Village Green and Hub construction dates as that would make parking and access to supermarkets very difficult in Lindfield.

A win for the community

Last Tuesday evening Councillors bowed to community pressure and did not support building height of 10 and 14 storeys in the Lindfield Village Hub! What a victory for people power! That’s the good news.

The not-so-good news is that they also voted against the original 2015 seven storey option. They did, however vote in favour of a maximum of 9 storeys and building height no higher than the highest building in Lindfield, which is the Aqualand building in Lindfield Avenue, at 8 storeys. The resolution also nominated the minimum size of the park, plaza, library and community facility which are the same size as the original 2015 Council plan. A copy of the resolution is at this link: Council Resolution

We thank all of you who took the time to send messages to Councillors both before the July meeting and leading up to the August meeting. They obviously had an effect and some common sense and listening to the community has prevailed even though we couldn’t quite get to the sought-after elusive seven storeys.

Your Support Lindfield committee is currently planning our next steps to build on this win and keep the pressure on Council to deliver what the community wants. We will await the publishing of the timetable for the next stages of the project. Geoff Douglas, the head of Major Projects for Council, said at the meeting that the Request for Tender would now not be issued before Christmas as there is more work to be done as a result of the change from the published plan to the compromise solution. We think that that is taking too long as it is already overdue according to the timeline currently on the Council website.

Surely the revision can’t take 4 months!

Jonathan O’Dea’s Address in Parliament

As our local State MP, Jonathan has constantly provided valuable support for us at Support Lindfield and for sensible development in the Hub. On Tuesday, the day of the Council meeting, he addressed the Legislative Assembly on the subject of the Hub. He was very pleased with the response from the Minister for Planning, Rob Stokes. Please read the Jonathan's Address at this link. Thank you, Jonathan, for recognising the community’s needs.

We would be very interested to hear your reaction to Council’s decision and invite you to email us at info@supportlindfield.net We will be considering our next steps and how to keep you, the community, involved as the project moves to its next stage. Thank you again for your support for this larger-than-life project that will positively transform the mid North Shore…….. sometime in the future! Who knows when?

Regards,

The Support Lindfield Team