A new McDonald’s fast food restaurant can be built at Birkdale Fair Shopping Centre following a judgement handed down on 11 December 2020 by Queensland’s Planning and Environment Court.
Local residents say no to McDonald’s
The development application MCU19/0142 was submitted to Redland City Council in October 2019 and attracted strong community opposition.
Soon after the application was lodged, a local resident initiated a change.org petition: Stop McDonalds drive through from being built into the Birkdale Fair carpark. This petition has attracted 896 signatures.
Birkdale Fair development application refused
The application to develop a McDonald’s at Birkdale Fair shopping centre was code assessable, so no public consultation was required.
The application was “called in” for a decision by the Council at a general meeting at the request of Cr Paul Bishop, the local councillor for Division 10.
The matter was considered by Council at a general meeting on 27 May 2020.
Unusually, the officers’ report recommended that the development application be refused. The officers’ report included several grounds for refusal under the following headings:
- Streetscape
- Landscaping
- Traffic impact
- Proposed reconfiguring a lot
The motion (worded exactly as proposed by officers) to refuse the application for a McDonald’s at Birkdale Fair was carried 11/0.
Appeal to the Planning and Environment Court
An appeal against the Council’s refusal was filed with the Planning and Environment Court on 17 June 2020 by the developer, Fort Street Real Estate Capital Pty Ltd.
After a hearing from 25-27 November 2020, Judge Everson upheld the appeal in his judgment dated 11 December 2020.
The Judge’s comments included the following statement:
“At the outset, it is important to reiterate that the court is determining a code assessable development application for the retrofitting of a portion of the car park of an established shopping centre to include a McDonald’s restaurant, an uncontroversial use for such land under the planning scheme.”
In his concluding remarks Judge Everson said:
“The proposed development is appropriate when having regard to the setting and context of the site, and complies with each of the relevant overall outcomes and performance outcomes of the relevant codes. It therefore complies with each code. In the case of the retaining wall, I am satisfied that the imposition of lawful conditions will further ensure compliance.”
Does Redland City Plan need to be amended?
Cr Paul Bishop made the following comment after the McDonald’s decision was published:
“Currently, The Redlands Planning Scheme stipulates the only trigger for ‘Impact Assessment’ in the District Centre Zone is in relation to ‘height’. This is a point of concern which I have been suggesting I s an inadequate measure to prevent local issues, such as the many site constraints, safety issues and traffic movement issues we face in Birkdale. These are some of the challenges that will need to be addressed in future proposed amendments to RPS.”
Redland City Council has stated it will assess the need, if any, for amendments to the planning provisions to overcome any ambiguity in the future.
Redlands2030 – 29 December 2020
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