The Hobart City Council has rejected a proposed development in Sandy Bay, despite it meeting the planning scheme and being recommended for approval.
The building at 9 Star Street was first put forward in 2019 as a residential complex with 12 apartments but was rejected due to concerns about density and a lack of private open space.
Following an appeal, the initial project was granted a planning permit by the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after the number of apartments was reduced to six.
That permit lapsed last year, leading to the revised proposal, which retained the same 12-unit building design but repurposed it as visitor accommodation.
At a meeting on Wednesday night, only councillors Bill Harvey and Gemma Kitsos supported the development.
Harvey said his support came from knowing that council decisions have been overturned in the past when they contradicted expert planning advice.
“The issues that I have are not based on the planning scheme, they’re based on the constraints and the difficulties of the site and I can’t base my decision on that,” he said.
Kitsos said it was “very frustrating” the development was neither residential nor commercial but sat “somewhere in the middle” as visitor accommodation.
“It’s just really disappointing that we still continue to have this issue with visitor accommodation while we can’t build enough residential dwellings for our community,” she said.
“It’s pretty accurate to say that until the state government changes things for us, we’re stuck with working within this scheme.”
Councillor Ryan Posselt moved for the development to be refused as he believed it did not meet the planning scheme’s street frontage, compatibility and surrounding character and scale requirements.
“This is another example of this [2018 PD6 Exemption and Standards for Visitor Accommodation in Planning Schemes] directive being just open slather, carte blanche, do what you want and you can classify it as visitor accommodation as long as no one is there for more than three months,” he said.
“The rush of the state government to bring on PD6 to allow their mates who have short stay accommodation to buy up property and convert it to short stay has resulted in a really poorly drafted directive that now has led us to problems like this.”
“I think we’re at 800 short stay residences in the city and the highest density of short stay of any capital city in the country. It’s just the wild west of planning.”
The council voted three to two to reject the development, with Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds, Ryan Posselt and Zelinda Sherlock opposing it.
