Curtin Residents Association president Ian Elsum at North Curtin. He is concerned the government won’t listen to community concerns. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
Inner South resident groups along the Southern Gateway area are alarmed at the lack of information coming from the ACT Government about its development intentions for the land alongside the light rail route to Woden, particularly for North Curtin.
The consultation report for the proposed North Curtin Residential Area on the horse paddocks was only released on Christmas Eve last year, more than a year after it was finalised.
The report, dated August 2024, found a strong community desire for medium-density development of townhouses, duplexes, and apartments up to four storeys.
It also found a strong need for shops and services, open green space, and concerns about the increased traffic from what the government has said will be a new suburb of 1300 homes.
There was no mention of a new interchange – the so-called Mint Interchange that would allow traffic to flow from Cotter Road onto Yarra Glen towards Woden, and traffic coming from the south to flow from Yarra Glen onto Cotter Road.
The lack of information over the past year does not mean the government has not been busy with a series of contracts for the Southern Gateway and North Curtin, totalling almost $2 million.
The civil engineering contract for North Curtin includes a map of the six proposed Southern Gateway development zones from Deakin to Farrer, which residents have not previously seen.
These developments, along with the release of the consultation report, have prompted resident groups to speculate that an announcement may be imminent. However, they remain sceptical that the government will take notice of the community feedback.
The six Southern Gateway development zones. Image: SLA.
Curtin Residents Association president Ian Elsum said the consultation report contained no surprises, so he did not know why it had taken so long to be released, unless it had something to do with the former Planning Directorate handing the North Curtin project to the Suburban Land Agency.
Mr Elsum said the report made it clear that the community did not want high-density development and that a suburb of that size would need services and amenities such as shops, parks, schools, and daycare.
He said that if land was to be released for apartments, they needed to be suitable for families.
“But most of the apartments are being built at 50 sqm,” Mr Elsum said.
“That would probably decrease yield, but if they want people to live in apartments, create apartments that people want to live in.”
Mr Elsum said the SLA needed to conduct consultation on draft Planning Conditions for North Curtin before submitting these to the National Capital Authority, which would also need to consult.
The SLA had told him that it expected to open consultation in the first quarter of 2026, but Mr Elsum suspected it was running late.
On the Southern Gateway, resident groups wanted urban infill done well, but the missing middle proposals did not offer much hope that this would be the case.
Mr Elsum said the proposals were for block-by-block development, which research had shown produced the worst possible outcomes.
“You’ve got to look at and do things on a much broader scale,” he said.
Mr Elsum said the community feared that any consultation would be late in the process and would necessarily be reactive.
“There’s a longstanding concern in the community about not really being genuinely listened to and the feedback taken truly into account,” he said.
Mr Elsum said the SLA awarded five contracts for work on the Southern Gateway project over the past year.
He said the most recent – Southern Gateway Three Dimensional Animated Videos and Visualisation Renders ($330,000) – suggested the SLA/government were preparing to make an announcement about the project.
Other contracts included an Infrastructure Capacity Study ($122,980), a survey of regulated and mature trees ($63,195), a Detailed Land and Attributes Survey for Engineering and Civil Design ($395,450), and a traffic count ($288,926).
There was also a North Curtin civil engineering contract worth $358,589 and a North Curtin Residential Traffic Impact Assessment contract worth $345,477.18.
