Supermarket giant wins new access in a roundabout way
SUPERMARKET giant Coles has won the right to build a U-turn facility at its proposed Beerwah homemaker centre as a court appeal to enter the hinterland market enters its third year.
Coles wants to build the shopping centre, including a supermarket, fast food outlet and fuel station, on the corner of Roys Rd and Steve Irwin Way.
In July 2021 the Sunshine Coast Council rejected the development application, citing reasons including the negative impact it would have on the existing regional activity centre in Beerwah and the subsequent fragmentation of the town.
In August that year Coles filed an appeal to the Planning and Environment Court arguing that the council erred in its decision and that its centre would enhance the cultural, physical and social wellbeing of residents.
Coles has since filed multiple applications for minor amendments to its original development application, the most recent being for a U-turn facility, which revealed that traffic coming out of the Moroney Place industrial centre, would be forced to turn left out of the site.
Expert traffic engineers for co-respondent, Village Fair Investments, claimed that the U-turn went beyond a minor change, was simply going to be another access point for traffic into the centre and would exacerbate already problematic traffic conditions at the intersection.
But in a decision released last week, Justice David Kent found in favour of Coles stating that it had succeeded in “demonstrating the contested change to be minor”.
“In terms of scale and degree, the new proposal is not so significantly different from the previous one as to amount to substantially different development,” Justice Kent wrote in his judgment.
“The proposal still has vehicular access from the land to Roys Rd; it is simply that the difficulty of the right turn from Moroney Place, particularly for heavy vehicles, has a different solution.”
Justice Kent also dismissed the argument that the U-turn facility was a new access point, stating the master plan included reference from the north east corner of the development.
mitch@gcnews.com.au
