By Margaret Maccoll
Noosa Council is now weighing up a proposal to build permanent and holiday units at Peregian Beach Village that has drawn both support and opposition from the beachside community.
Council received 300 submissions in response to The Scanlon Group proposal to build 58 units behind the new IGA supermarket on land zoned Open Space Recreation that was previously occupied by a caravan park.
The application proposes the development of 26 permanent residential housing units, 20 visitor accommodation units and 12 units for use as either permanent residential or visitor accommodation.
Noosa Council Planning and Environment manager Kerri Coyle said council staff would prepare a report containing a recommendation which, at this stage, would likely be presented to council in July.
“That report will consider how the application conforms or does not conform to the planning scheme,” she said.
Tony Scanlon said it had been his aim to put forward an application that was respectful of the community, took in all the needs of the environment and was “a nice connect” with a digital hub being developed by council in nearby Rufous Street. “We work and live here and have absolute respect for Peregian village,” he said.
However, Peregian Beach Community Association acting president Barry Cotterell said the proposed development would “create a traffic nightmare,” part of it was being “built on a creek bed” and “the community doesn’t want it”.
Barry said traffic access to the development would exacerbate an already busy area between the IGA and hardware store and further slow vehicles by increasing foot traffic crossing the David Low Way from the IGA to the beach and village shops.
He said the proposal didn’t conform to the zoning of the land and the association held concerns fill brought in to raise the land would leach into the Noosa National Park wetlands below.
In a statement, Peregian Beach Business Association president Vicki Cooper said:
“Within the business association, there were members who opposed the planned development behind the new IGA, but we have discussed it and seen all proposals. We emailed all our 60 members to make sure there was consensus before voting in favour of the proposal”.
