The Town of Claremont has backed down and given approval for joint venture partners Hawaiian and Multiplex to build a new $280 million residential and retail centre in Claremont originally proposed in March, after recently rejecting a retail only proposal.
Last week five conditions over height and setbacks were lifted, clearing the way for development to proceed after the consortium had lodged four development applications over seven years.
The Town of Claremont had originally put 120 conditions on the March proposal and all but five of these were agreed on through mediation, but retaining a residential component to the development proved more important to the Council than digging its heels in over height and setbacks.
Hawaiian general manager of property development Stuart Duplock told WA Business News the Council’s turnaround was a welcome surprise and, while the project was not necessarily going ahead, the viability of the project would now be closely examined.
“We are still proving up the viability of the project given current market conditions for construction prices,” Mr Duplock said.
Mr Duplock said he was pleased a residential component was approved and that there were 160 apartments proposed for the block between Gugeri Street and St Quentin Avenue. In several areas, there are two levels of retail, with four levels of residential apartments on top.
“The retail component is worth roughly $200 million and the residential apartments roughly $80 million,” he said.
Town of Claremont acting CEO Terry Pearson said getting a residential component in the development was very important for the town and the council was willing to compromise some shadowing in order to obtain a residential component.
“The most recent application had no residential, which we weren’t happy with and we had a lot of feedback from ratepayers about how important the residential component is,” Mr Pearson said.
“The main issues over the March proposal were over height and setbacks, and the council reconsidered its opinion because we are very keen to see the residential component.
“We weighted up the factors and would rather have slight overshadowing than miss out on residential.
“We tried very hard to get something that looks good, and although we tried to get something better, we are happy with the proposal that has been approved.”
He said issues regarding developers’ contributions to the road system had since been resolved through a whole of council policy, which used a formula to calculate a figure of contribution.
