An artist’s impression of the mixed-use proposal for 9 Botany Street, Phillip. Image: Studio Architecture and Interiors.
A development bid in Phillip that aimed to turn the service district into the Braddon of the south is still alive despite multiple refusals, thanks to an ACT Supreme Court decision that the applicant was denied procedural fairness in the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Peter Micalos’s Intellectual Property Group has been trying to redevelop 9 Botany Street since 2021, when it first proposed a four-storey plus attic, mixed-use project with 38 units and ground-floor commercial tenancies.
In 2022, that morphed into a hotel with 56 serviced apartments, a pub with a beer garden and restaurant, and an espresso bar on the ground floor.
However, the Planning Authority twice refused the development application, on 11 June 2024, and the Reconsideration on 1 November, with the applicant then going to ACAT seeking a review of the decision.
ACAT gave that short shrift when it came to a hearing earlier this year, taking only a day to view the site and take oral submissions on 17 March. It handed down its decision the next day, dismissing the application for review.
On appeal, Acting Justice Andrew Muller found that ACAT declined to hear oral evidence, did not provide the applicant with sufficient time to make certain submissions, and incorrectly considered time limits under s 22P of the ACAT Act.
He ordered the matter back to ACAT to be heard properly.
The site at 9 Botany Street, Phillip. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
Intellectual Property Group had wanted ACAT to amend the development application by imposing conditions, but ACAT argued it did not have the power to do so.
Justice Mullins found that, as well as denying procedural fairness, ACAT had constructively failed to exercise its jurisdiction.
The Planning Authority had issues with several aspects of the proposed development, such as the unsuitability of the land, parking, changes to the Crown lease, and a lack of support from utilities and Transport Canberra and City Services.
It did not support the applicant’s bid for a conditional approval, instead preferring to amend the DA, as it believed these conditions would significantly alter the development, such as the swapping of the restaurant for a substation.
The applicant was also prepared to relinquish the pub in favour of restaurant use under the Crown lease.
The Planning Authority said the proposed changes were over and above those provided for in the evidence filed with ACAT (for example, a gross floor area amendment was raised for the first time).
The proposed changes were also caught by the time limits of the transition to the new Territory Plan, the Planning Authority said.
But the court’s decision means that the issue will return to ACAT, and Intellectual Property Group’s aspirations for the site remain a possibility.
When it first proposed the redevelopment in 2020, Intellectual Property Group said it would be the first urban renewal project in the precinct since the ACT Government finalised its master plan for the area and would drive the revitalisation of that part of Phillip.
A social media post at the time announced its vision for the area, saying the Phillip service precinct could be the ‘Braddon of the South’.
At present the site is occupied by an undistinguished two-storey building and sits among used car yards and near a laundromat and cake shop.
Comment was sought from Intellectual Property Group.
A decision on costs was reserved.
