New view of Inverloch without the hypocrisy please

THERE’S a lot wrong with residential development in Inverloch.

While some in the community have developed an almost religious fervour to retaining any and all trees and shrubs in the town, especially along the foreshore, they tolerate the common practice adopted by many new home builders and residential developers of completely denuding sites of every single piece of vegetation and building on almost 100 per cent of the site.

Many flout the seven metre height guideline that the Bass Coast Shire Council has unsuccessfully attempted to defend and go for the 11-metre state height limit, often chasing a coastal view, and almost always winning the argument at VCAT.

The council is supposed to be undertaking a Neighbourhood Character Study and a Housing Strategy while preparing a Residential Development Framework that’s supposed to provide more certainty to would-be home builders.

However, while the timelines for this work have been constantly delayed, lately by the State Government dragging the chain with its controversial “Distinctive Area and Landscape” process, the development of dwellings in the town has been ad hoc at best.

In one prominent case, community members and the council are heading to VCAT next week for a five-day hearing about plans for a four-storey apartment development on the foreshore at 2-4 The Esplanade.

Poor planning and an inconsistent approach to saving trees and stopping overdevelopment has cost Inverloch.

The complete lack of vision, for example, with the development of the former Mollers Caravan Park site, one of the very few areas along the Inverloch foreshore where you can have a view of the water, is a case in point.

At least part of this site, adjacent to the commercial area, should have been set aside for a frontage of cafés and retail development, under apartments, where locals and visitors alike could come, and enjoy the ambience of the glorious Anderson Inlet area.

But, having lost that opportunity, the council has got to be realistic about what people want when they come to a coastal town, they want good access to, and a view of the water.

If the shire and the government won’t let Inverloch grow out, they have to allow it to grow up or risk making the coastal town exclusive to those who got in first. It will get increasingly difficult, for example, for those needed to run the area’s service industries to find somewhere to live.

No accommodation, no employment.