Neighbours defeat council in court over ‘ill-fitting’ super-sized tower

Australian Surf Life Saving comp at North Kirra Beach – an area where a new court ruling has favoured a protest by neighbours over a council development approval. Picture: Annette Dew In a stunning win for furious neighbours, a court has wiped out council approval for a towering luxury apartment expansion after a judge slammed the local government for treating its own planning rules as an “arbitrary but dispensable aspiration”. The stinging rebuke from Planning and Environment Court Judge Nicole Kefford DCJ stripped a developer of council approval to stack five extra storeys onto a development site in a suburb that has one of Australia’s most popular surf beaches. The development site, bordered by high-rises and foreshore parkland. Image credit: BDA Architecture via Urban Planning Services / City of Gold Coast. The decision set aside an approval by the Council of the City of Gold Coast, which had cleared the developer to expand the site at 5 and 7 Haig Street in Kirra into a 14-storey, 105-unit tower. The developer – headed by founder and CEO John Kearney through project entity Immerse Projects 16 Pty Ltd – had already launched the development as the $130 million nine-storey Kaiya ...