35 Water Street
Issues for Schools:
The Department of Planning have approved a 118 bed hospital at 35 Water Street Wahroonga and this will have some serious impacts on the local schools. The mail impacts are as follows:
- Parking - the
facility has parking for only 92 cars. Barry O'Farrell's office have
assisted us in undertaking a survey of private hospitals and their real
parking needs. These discussions indicate that the parking needs for a
mixed use hospital is up to 260 spaces. Calculations of the existing
parking with the 4 local primary schools (Prouille, Wahroonga Public, Knox
Prep and St Lucy's) and the commuter parking (which already conflicts with
the school needs) will result in complete gridlock in the local streets.
- Traffic Generation
- the approval failed to
address access to the site of larger vehicles let alone deal with the real
traffic generation of the facility. Our traffic consultants advised
that the development traffic generation will exceed the RTA's "Environmental
Capacity of Residential Streets". A number of the approved uses are
ambiguous in this approval. It appears that a medical centre,
conference rooms and a restaurant/cafe are also approved but no traffic
generation or parking needs have been included in any of the calculations.
- Children Safety - a
number of factors come into this for the local children.
a. uses of the hospital - approved uses are drug & alcohol rehabilitation, psychiatric, postnatal, rehabilitation.
b. increased traffic
c. increased parking
d. no augmentation of footpaths
e. no traffic management plan included in approval
- Fire Safety -
the Bush School has additional concerns as the issue of safety in the event
of a bush fire was not addressed in this approval. This means that no
measures have been put in place to protect the children. How will fire
trucks get to school if the local streets are parked out?
These issues do not even touch on many
problems and dangers associated with the construction of such a massive building
around so many schools. Much of the documentation concerning how this will
be handled is yet to be produced.
We need the schools and its parents to voice their concerns about these issues
NOW. It does make a difference.
Here are
photos
showing congestion during school hours.
Follow link for
School Presentation (very large file)
Follow the links to the
Write Now
and send your letters to those suggested.
We also need to raise funds to fight this approval. We need your donations
in order to do this. Follow this link to find out how to
Donate
