Digital Hub Development and Rufous St Precinct Project

Council’s granted a development permit for Material Change of Use and Reconfiguring of Lot at 253 & 255 David Low Way and 5-7 Rufous Street, Peregian Beach, at its Ordinary Meeting on the 21 July 2016.

One of the conditions of this approval is that prior to any building work commencing on the existing car park alternative car parks be built in Rufous St and the temporary car park next to the tennis courts as per the attached plan.

Council engineers are now developing a detailed design for these works on Rufous St including new footpaths, parking spaces and stormwater run-off protections.

At the same time, the Sparks Architect team, who developed the Rufous St masterplan, are designing lighting and safety upgrades for Rufous Lane which connects the parking in Rufous St to Peregian Village.

The Rufous St civil works and the Lane safety upgrade will be the first two construction projects in the Precinct, however not much will happen on the ground in the next two or three months while detailed designs are completed and tenders for the works issued and decided upon.

Once tenders have been let there will be newsletters and media to inform residents of the construction program before the street upgrade works begin.

All of this means that construction of the new Digital Hub on the northern end of the David Low Way carpark is not expected to start until May / June 2017.

See Rufous St Precinct Stage 1 Works plan in the document library to the right of this screen.

The public notification period for the Design Application for the proposed redevelopment of the Rufous Street precinct closed on July 1, 2016.

Six submissions were received.Three objected to the proposed development, two were supportive and one was neutral.

The application has now been assessed and is currently on Council's agenda for approval, subject to conditions, as part of Council’s July 2016 round of meetings.

In other project news, Dan Sparks Architects has been commissioned to develop a design for the upgrade of the laneway between David Low Way and Rufous St.

Detailed design work for the civil works to upgrade Rufous St and the temporary car park next to the tennis court has also commenced with construction planned for the last quarter of 2016.

The Peregian Beach Rufous Street Precinct development is a step nearer construction with formal submissions now invited on the proposed development permit for a material change of use (MCU) at 253 -255 David Low Way.

The public notification period is between June 10 and July 1, 2016. Residents can view plans, including artist impressions of the proposed IT hub and new community building in the document library to the right of this screen.

To have your say visit Council's website homepage select ‘I want to…find a planning application’, enter the application number MCU16/0044 & REC16/0009 and follow the prompts.

The Rufous Street MCU, which is in line with the recently approved Rufous St Master Plan, makes provision for a change of use on the site to allow the development of a digital hub. It also provides for additional car parks and preserves a significant amount of open space land for the community’s use and enjoyment.

In stage two of the proposed development, the application seeks approval for the digital hub to expand into the current community house and a new community building to be built where the old Bowls Clubhouse used to be.”

The Development Application (DA) for a material change of use and reconfiguring a lot for the proposed Rufous St redevelopment has now been lodged with Council. The application was acknowledged as having been properly made on May 3, 2016 and is currently being assessed.

The ref nos are MCU16/0044 & REC16/0009.

If you are interested you can view the application on Council’s website - Planning Online by typing in the file reference numbers. This will also allow you to follow the progress of the application through the assessment process.

The revised master plan was approved by Council on March 10,2016. The next step is the development of building designs and the lodgement of the Material Change of Use Development Application. It is anticipated that the MCU will be lodged by the end of April 2016.

Council wishes to thank all residents who made submissions on the draft Rufous St Master Plan. Overall the submissions were generally supportive of the Master Plan and provided a number of helpful suggestions.

All submissions have now been reviewed by the project team and some modifications made to the draft Master Plan as a result. A copy of the revised Master Plan can be viewed in the Document Library to the right of this screen.

The main changes which have been made to the Plan are:

· a reduction in formal car parking in Rufous St (from 38 + 1 disabled to 19 + 1 disabled + 1 Scooter) ) with the provision of more open space and improved linkages with the Di Hirst Oval

· improved disability access and the addition of disability, scooter and bicycle parking spaces; and

· the provision of additional car parking (from 24 + 1 disabled to 50 +1 disabled + 2 Scooter) in the recreational reserve near Veggie Village in Stage 2 of the Plan subject to DNRM approval.

Adamson Town Planning has collated the key issues that have been considered into a review document which is also available in the document library to the right of your screen.

The next step in the process is that the revised Master Plan will be considered by Council at its March round of meetings with a report being presented to the Infrastructure and Planning Committee on 1 March. If you wish to view the report please follow the link to the agenda here.

Council has unveiled a draft master plan for the Rufous Street precinct at Peregian Beach.More than 100 people turned out for the unveiling and to offer their feedback.

Council’s Community Services Director Alan ‘Fox’ Rogers today encouraged the community who could not attend Saturday's meeting to view the plans online in the document library to the right of this screen and comment via email if they wish. The email address to use is rufous.peregian@noosa.qld.gov.au

Mr Rogers says residents’ comments at the meeting were generally very positive.

“People were pleased to see that Council is retaining significant green space in the master plan and IT professionals and young people liked the concept of the digital hub with its promise of co-working space and high-speed broadband,” he said.

“Attendees at the public meeting also liked the way in which the master plan reinforces the pedestrian linkages between Rufous Street and the Peregian Beach village, and everyone agreed that the new location for Peregian Beach Community House proposed in Stage 2 is a better location than where it currently stands.

“The additional parking proposed in the plan, however, generated comments both for and against and some residents were concerned that the plan, once fully implemented, might generate traffic issues on the corner of David Low Way and Woodland Drive.”

“We appreciated the feedback from everyone who joined us on Saturday and we look forward to receiving further community feedback online.

“Once we have reviewed all of it we will refine the draft master plan for Council’s consideration later this year.”

A meeting of key stakeholders was held on 10 December 2015 to present changes to concept plans for the Rufous Street precinct in light of traffic studies, financial feasibility studies, what was possible under legislation and other considerations.

The key stakeholders agreed with the new concept plans with the following amendments:

• ensure pedestrian linkages between the Rufous Street precinct and Peregian Beach Village are highly visible, well constructed and well lit
• make changes to parking areas on Rufous street to include a median strip and additional parking spaces on the eastern side of the street for ease of traffic flow
• include traffic calming devices along Rufous Street

The design options presented to key stakeholders on September 2 centred on a “knowledge campus” on one third of the Rufous St site, with the remaining two-thirds of the site devoted to free recreational green space for general community use.The design options:

*replace the two asbestos-ridden buildings and maintenance shed of the former bowls club with structures designed to be environmentally sustainable.

* include a building that will foster IT- driven education and enterprise and mixed-use areas

* includes capacity for a future community hub on the southern corner of the site near the Tennis Club.

* includes nose-in car parking along Rufous Street along with an upgraded car park next to Veggie Village.

* Includes potential pedestrian links to Peregian Village

Talks have been initiated with interested local businesses and universities regarding potential partnerships.The next step in the process is for Council to analyse feedback from the September meeting of key stakeholders, revise concept plans and undertake traffic and financial feasibility studies, prior to lodging a Material Change of Use (MCU) for the northern end of the site.

Once the concept has been finalised and the MCU has been lodged, the community will have another opportunity to comment on the proposed development.

The Peregian Your Say public meeting and an online consultation on Your Say Noosa, resulted in a clear need to have further, specific, community engagement for priority areas within the overall Peregian Beach village precinct.

One of these priority areas is Rufous Street.Thirty six people, representing key local Peregian Beach stakeholders, attended a “charette” at The Peregian Beach Surf Club on June 27 to help develop design options for the Rufous St precinct.

The design workshop was facilitated by architect Phil Smith and included a number of other local and Brisbane-based architects and designers, along with members of the community.The output of the workshop was 4 different design options which were then consolidated and refined into a single option - The Peregian Knowledge Campus.

The knowledge campus concept has been discussed with Councillors and the next step will be to discuss this option with charette participants at a meeting to be held on September 2.