Tears for Bondi Road

Opinion by INGRID STREWE

Once again Waverley residents are being forced to reassess their living space by a state government and greedy developers. Our shopping strip – Bondi Road – has just about all we could ask for: a French bakery, a Russian deli, second hand white goods, an organic butcher, restaurants and pizza joints, a great florist, a good super market or two, kosher shops, and fabulous art supplies, panel beaters, a great health shop where you can refill milk bottles, a chocolate shop, super fresh vegetables and even diesel, oil and air. We are well serviced, it is a much loved shopping strip. Hundreds walk to it. Many drive. Lots get on and off busses.

There is a clearway in the mornings heading into the city and again in the evenings heading home to Bondi. For workers. On special events such as City to Surf and SXS there is weekend clearway. Businesses along the strip say that on the special clearway days they shut shop early as patronage drops significantly. We who love this area dread the thought of a permanent clearway or so called transit zone. We would see the end of this area as we know and love it. You just have to look at the horror that is Parramatta Road to know that this is a fact. The shops there are closed and dusty and the street dirty with unburnt carbon dust.

We do not want to give up our local shopping strip to developers using spurious excuses such as it needs revitalisation or we need to widen the road for a tram. There was a tram once, but nobody owned cars then. This has changed, 69.7% of Waverley families own at least one car and they will not give them up – yet. Every new developers’ dream brings increased traffic congestion.

So what’s all this about? Developers pushing for high rise, that’s what. There seems to be a push for 18 – 20 meters along Bondi Road and we don’t want it. We are pushed and pushed by the state government to accept the loss of delightful residential cottages and small blocks of flats to make way for developers in the Bondi basin. They build large blocks of flats to make money. We don’t accept this, but it happens. But enough is enough. We will not be pushed around on this. We will fight to save our interesting, quirky, sustainable, people sized Bondi Road Village.

The Villages DCP (Development Control Plan) is being reassessed. Write to our local council planners – tell them to protect our very successful shopping strip – jaime.hogan@waverley.nsw.gov.au

Write to your two local MPs Ms Upton and Ms O’Neill and tell them why you like your Bondi Road shops and ask them to protect them.

marjorie.o’neill@parliament.nsw.gov.au   or   coogee@parliament.nsw.gov.au
gabrielle.upton@parliament.nsw.gov.au   or   vaucluse@parliament.nsw.gov.au