A DEVELOPER will be allowed to continue removing trees at the former Kingswood Golf Course in Dingley Village.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal recently considered whether site owner AustralianSuper should be allowed to remove 23 trees from the land. The tribunal found that 10 of the trees must be retained, but have permitted the rest to be removed.
The developer lodged applications for each of the 23 trees separately with VCAT. Kingston Council had refused permission to cut down 16 of them.
The VCAT ruling read that “10 of the proposals for tree removal have unacceptable outcomes and those trees are to be retained.”
“I find that 13 of the proposals for tree removal or lopping have acceptable outcomes and they can be removed in total or lopped and reduced to habitat stumps whereby their habitat value can be retained. This results in the removal of four trees that includes three Southern Mahogany gums and one Lightwood, the destruction by lopping to a habitat stump of eight trees that are all Southern Mahogany gums, the significant lopping of one tree which is a Manna Gum, [and] the retention of ten trees that includes seven Southern Mahogany gums, one Coast Manna Gum, and two River Red Gums,” the finding read.
One of the trees, a Southern Mahogany, had already been removed before VCAT made its ruling. However, VCAT granted a permit for retrospective removal.
The golf course land was purchased by AustralianSuper for $125 million in 2014. It plans to subdivide the land into 823 lots with a maximum height of three storeys. Previous plans at the site have drawn fierce community backlash, with council receiving more than 8000 submissions on one proposal.
The final decision on the subdivision lies with the state government. An advisory committee report was handed to the state government in March, but it still has not announced its decision.
First published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News – 23 November 2022