Friends of the City of Unley Society, FOCUS, is a group of Unley residents working to preserve and enhance the heritage and the amenity in the city of Unley. FOCUS aims to influence local and state governments when decisions are made concerning the built heritage and the liveability of Unley. Some of our members live in the Forestville area adjacent to the Le Cornu site.
The Le Cornu site abuts an area where some of the housing is over 100 years old. The site offers a wonderful opportunity to achieve best practice outcomes for the interface between older single storey housing and medium and high rise development. Graded development is the cornerstone of sympathetic high rise development in developed suburbs. It is not clear this will occur along Leader Street with higher buildings located in the centre of the site. Buildings of up to 8 storeys are noted in that plan and it is critical they are not on the Leader Street perimeter where buildings of 2 storeys only will protect the liveability of the many residents in the surrounding singe storey houses.
Traffic flows in and out of the site are of great concern to local people. The recent plan does not indicate how the multiple cars which the site will bring will move through the development and where they will enter and exit. Leader Street and the streets running off are small local streets not designed to cope with the hundreds of cars. The statement in the plan that no driveway access off Leader and Maple Streets is confusing.
Tree canopy appears to be only partially addressed. There is considerable reference to the laudable Urban Forest project and to some mature trees in the green spaces but no reference to spaces for large deep rooted trees which would provide important cooling in the multiple cement structures which will dominate the site. Adelaide’s tree canopy is rapidly declining and this site could be a gold standard site for planting deep rooted trees managed with efficient water collection from the surrounding buildings.
FOCUS hopes the needs of the residents in the many streets surrounding the Le Cornu site are given more careful attention and their valuable insights are considered when final decisions are made. This renewal project is more than the Le Cornu site, it is also about how it can seamlessly grow into a valuable older area of Adelaide.
Authorised by Mary Rumbold President of FOCUS
Friends of the City of Unley Society, Inc. 