IT’S both iconic and infamous, but after standing for years and inundated with flooding countless number of times, the Curtis Falls Café is no longer.
The demolition team moved in to remove what remained after Cyclone Alfred finally brought it to a very wet end.
Now the Scenic Rim Regional Council has approved plans for Awadesh Benapuria to build a new café and two dwellings, built on top of each other, totalling five-bedrooms to be built above defined flood levels of 500mm.
The demolition and plans have brought mixed reactions from locals, many believing it’s doomed to further flooding and a mistake to rebuild.
However, others think it was long overdue, and a new business will bring a renewed life to what was a tired corner.
The approval for the new development was given without going to Council for a vote, nor input from National Parks, which Councillor Amanda Hay has expressed disappointment about given the contentious nature of the expanded plans and environmental issues of the site’s location.
“It was done as code assessable, and I’d have thought given the repeated flooding problems it has had, it should have come to council for a vote,” Cr Hay said.
Code assessable means it is assessed against relevant assessable benchmarks or codes identified in the planning scheme and does not involve public notification or a vote of Councillors.
“It would have been more appropriate to resume the property given the vulnerability to flooding,” Cr Hay said.
No ecological assessment was done.
“It’s over development on a small site and the gross floor area is nearly double that of the original building and the previous impervious area was 284m2 however the approved plans now show 610m2,” she said. The site is 1,118sqm, so more than 50 per cent is impervious.
Cr Hay said previous State Assessment and Referral Agency notices show the site has been problematic due to encroachments beyond the property boundary onto the State-controlled Road corridor.
Plans submitted for the new development again featured this unauthorised encroachment and the developer was asked to correct this.
She said National Parks has also expressed concerns about the development and had not been consulted, despite being a neighbour on two sides.
“Morally they should have been consulted given the environmental significance of the site,” Cr Hay said. She also expressed concern about one of the boundary setbacks.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Environment said Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service will monitor for any impacts of the development on the natural values of Tamborine Mountain National Park.
She said she was also concerned about the on-site parking.
“The conditions are contradictory. One condition states three parking bays on site, one of which is a disability bay, yet another condition is that all staff and the residents of the two dwellings must park on site, so three parking bays isn’t going to cut it,” she said.
“Given that there is now a food and drink outlet and two dwellings, I struggle to grasp how the vehicles of the residents of the two dwellings and all staff can be accommodated on three on-site car spaces, one of which is designated PWD.”
“The traffic assessment states it needs 23 parking spaces and people can park on the street, but the current on-street spaces are not just used for visitors at the business’s premises, but to access the national park.”
Cr Hay said condition 28 of the plans stating the development must be flood resistant and able to withstand being submerged under water for a period of at least 24 hours without requiring replacement was an admission that the site is expected to flood.
She further added that she could not think of a more inappropriate site for redevelopment on the mountain and looks forward to implementation of condition 29(c) which requires regular flood management drills for the occupants.
The post The End of Curtis Falls Café and a New Beginning appeared first on Tamborine Mountain News.
