A MEETING to decide the the fate of the much-maligned Whitebridge housing development has been postponed.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Joint Regional Planning Panel was originally scheduled to meet at Lake Macquarie council chambers on Thursday night, but the meeting has been pushed back to December 17.
SNL Building Constructions first lodged its application for 91 two, three and four-storey townhouses on Dudley Road in November 2013.
The application went through several rounds of community consultation and council meetings before it was considered by the panel in July.
A decision was deferred after a lengthy debate, fuelled by dozens of speakers from the Whitebridge Community Alliance, which remains firmly opposed to the development in its current form.
The panel urged the developer to make several changes to the plans, including scrapping four, fourth-floor apartments facing Dudley Road and another two, single-level units at the rear of the site on Kopa Street.
The revised plans will be assessed at the December meeting.
The Star contacted SNL Building Constructions for comment on why the meeting had been postponed, but the company failed to respond by the deadline.
Whitebridge Community Alliance spokesperson Sean Brown said the group would again be well represented at the meeting to argue that the development’s height and density was out of character for the suburb.
“We’re planning to get as many people as we can to speak again,” Mr Brown said.
“We’ll be speaking on similar matters, seeing as [SNL Building Constructions] haven’t made most of the changes they were asked to.
“It was a token attempt [to placate the community’s concerns].”