Things are starting to move at the Sunrise Beach Blue Care development. Glossy Bob Carey met an Energex official on the Bluecare site who had started work on electrical infrastructure. He suggested construction would start around August.
Council staff update on the development
Bob followed up with Conor Neville, Ecologist in Noosa Council’s development assessment team and this is what we found out:
- The southern site lot 6 has its approvals in place and Bluecare can determine when they want to start (it could be August);
- For the northern site lot 6 the stormwater treatment train is still being worked out so no approvals are in place yet for the works to commence;
- the Ecological Management Plan author reported on the seed propagation progress for Glossy feed trees. Seeds collected on the site to be erased seem very viable. Apparently there are plenty of seedlings.
- Now timing of the planting is critical so they don’t end up with seedling that are too big.
- Where will these seedlings go? Some of these seedlings will be planted in the Girraween Estate and Council have started internal discussions to find other land parcels for these seedlings to go.
- Other opportunities had been discussed at council to help the vulnerable Glossies through the clear-fell of their feeding habitat. Peter Milne is investigating nesting boxes, drinking waterholes in road reserves and parks, and acoustic monitoring. Some key people are still on leave, but council expect things to pick up pace in the next couple of weeks.
- Bluecare have engaged property management company Lendlease to deliver the project on the southern site and we were given a contact for them.
Lendlease
We then followed up with the Lendlease contact, giving an overview of our concerns about habitat destruction threatening the local Glossy Black population. A week later we received this reponse from Terry Hamilton, Social Sustainability Manager at Lendlease (terry.hamilton@lendlease.com):
“Good Afternoon Desire,
My sincere apologies for the delay in coming back to you, thanks for your patience with us.
We really appreciate you reaching out and providing our team with this background on Glossy Team Sunrise.
We were appointed by Blue Care late last year and our project team is currently preparing to start community consultation. We have just been able to issue a formal statement today regarding our involvement in the project and I have attached this for you.
Of course, we are very keen to meet with you. We have some team members still to return from leave, and some new members settling into the team, so we are just trying to confirm the project team’s availability to commence one-one meetings. We hope to be able to schedule these in for the week beginning 10 February.
In the meantime, would you mind providing us with some specific dates/times that might suit you best? We can work around these options to schedule a time that suits everyone.
We look forward to meeting with you in the next few weeks.”
“Sunrise Holding Statement
Current as at 30 January 2020
Lendlease has entered into a Development Management Agreement with Blue Care to develop an integrated retirement and aged care precinct on their behalf in Sunrise Beach, Noosa. The project provides an opportunity to develop strong links to local community facilities and schools within the existing Sunrise neighbourhood hub,
allowing the whole community to engage in this intergenerational precinct.
Over the coming months we look forward to engaging with local community groups and the community to better understand their needs relating to the Sunrise Beach project. We’re currently working with local environmental groups to understand how we can best address specific requirements relating to the site and its surrounds.
The planning for Sunrise will be undertaken with extensive local community engagement. We’ll be asking the community for their views, and to collaborate with us, so we look forward to working through the environmental principles with the community in the coming months.”
Stay tuned
We will pursue a meeting with Lendlease and are genuinely interested to find out how this development is supposed to work for us, the community, considering the added traffic constraints around the school and the high fire risk. How much are they committed to protect our now even more endangered wildlife? How will other plant relocations and top soil scraping be managed – there are many older grass trees in the area to be cleared and the relocation site hasn’t been selected yet.
We will call on Lendlease to make decisions with the best interest for the environment, the community and overall sustainability.
If you are interested in protecting 5 hectares of precious Glossy habitat in Sunrise join Glossy Team Sunrise and let the people with the power to do this differently know how you feel. Talk to your elected representatives, nudge Peter Milne whenever and wherever you see him and basically just get vocal. Rise for the Sunrise Glossies!
