Councillor Chris Harris

Media Release

City of Sydney Greens Councillor Chris Harris suspects that the owner of the CUB site and Minister Sartor are preparing the way to announce increased density on the CUB site and are simply going through the motions by pretending to consult with the community.

“It is time that Labor Minister Sartor stops misleading the public and comes clean with the deal that he has done with the owner. It is also time that our government starts considering the welfare of the community instead of the profits of their developer mates who donate millions of dollars to help Labor candidates get elected.” Said Cr Harris.

“A meeting of around 100 people at UTS on Tuesday night listened to Mr Chris Johnson, Chairman of the Minister’s CUB advisory committee, provide misleading information about the process that Labor’s Minister
Sartor has initiated by calling in the CUB site at Chippendale for his personal approval. It is clear that the minister had been in discussion with the owners of the site and the Greens demand that full details of
all discussions including attendance records, meeting dates and minutes be made public. It should be noted that Mr Johnson took this request on notice at the meeting.”

The meeting was told on two occasions by Mr Johnson, that the advisory committee had no particular density control (FSR) in mind.

“It is clear from documents provided by Foster’s, which are displayed on the Dept of Planning website, that Foster’s are asking for 260,000 square metres of floor space on the site. This equates to an FSR of
4.5:1 across the site. Such an FSR was considered “unachievable” by a design competition conducted by the City of Sydney in 2004.

“Given that the owner was able to achieve an FSR of 4:1 from the City of Sydney, it seems obvious that the reason that the owner asked Minister Sartor to call the development in was because it wanted a better yield and therefore more profit from the sale of the site. Therefore any suggestion that the Dept of Planning has no FSR in mind simply lacks credibility.”

“It should be noted that an FSR of 4.5:1 would deliver 2000 units on the site along with 2000 cars. Further, government regulations (SEPP 65) would allow 600 of these units to have little or no sunlight. Sounds like a vertical urban slum to me!” said Cr Harris.