What you can do:

Write to the local member Carmel Tebbutt and ask her to protect the local community from this massive overdevelopment

Email: marrickville@parliament.nsw.gov.au Phone: 9558 9000

Gus you make a good point about boycotting AMP products - I have to check my work super account, it might have AMP shares and if so I will definitely be making some changes!

This massive overdevelopment is entirely unnecessary and unwanted. I live near the Metro, and it currently services all my day-to-day needs. It is on one level, it is easy to navigate, it has banks/post office/RTA/NRMA facilities plus 2 supermarkets, K mart, liquor store, and plenty of other fresh produce retailers, hairdressers, boutiques, optometrist, medical centre, etc etc. I go to Newtown, Enmore or Marrickville for more quirky shops or for coffee and dinner, and to the city or Broadway for other generic-brand shopping. If the Metro is DOUBLED in size, on multi-levels and on 2 building sites, it will become a labyrinth of bland, generic, blah blah blah stuff and just won't be so easy and accessible to get around in. So many people I know come to the Metro because it is easy to find  your way around, not to mention - a lot of house-bound/disabled/elderly people are also bussed to the Metro (in favour of any other centre such as Leichhardt or Broadway) for exactly those same reasons. I grew up in Cronulla, and when the Miranda shopping centre doubled in size, it became a  nightmare, it was so big that it was simply exhausting to shop there.

I experience negative impact from the existing centre - such as cars trawling up and down the street hunting for a parking spot (instead of using the rooftop carpark), double-parking or parking over the driveway, abandoning trolleys in driveway and on footpath, dumping litter. Then there is also the pollution and noise, and the constant racketty clanking trolley-collection truck, plus massive truck deliveries (air breaks, reverse alarm beep-beep-beep, refrigerated truck engines on all the time) and the unloading of pallets etc; the constantly-faulty KMart alarm going off all night ... I could go on and on .... but if the centre is doubled in size with an estimated 50-60% more traffic expected, plus the hugely increased number of service truck deliveries required, well, our lives will be hell. 

The Metro is not just near residential properties, it is SURROUNDED on THREE SIDES by tiny mostly Federation single houses!  The expanded Metro will LOOM over these small houses like a hulking monster. There is not a main aertial road nearby, and all the roads around the centre are narrow 1 lane streets, that already get extremely congested during peak periods.  How can a proposed major centre be serviced by these tiny narrow local roads - it just doesn't make sense.

Marrickville is an ethnically diverse, vibrant, interesting VILLAGE - it is no place for this inappropriately large and inappropriately located development. Please write a letter of objection to the Dept of Planning (the body that will review and approve the plans, not the local council) BEFORE 10 Sept 2010 (the deadline has been extended by 2 weeks.)  EVERY SINGLE submission will count to help prevent this monstrosity going ahead.

http://majorprojects.planning.nsw.gov.au/index.pl?action=view_job&job_id=3734

There is also more information available on what you can do, and what is being done by local residents and businesses, on www.metrowatch.com.au

Thanks for your support on this important, silly issue, Poodle... We, the people, have to act locally to protect our varied ways of life — how weird or great these are — from shopping dictators. This project has been mostly rejected by the community of people living in the area, rejected by most (if not all) shop owners in the area, rejected by the Marrickville Council, and should be rejected by the RTA on traffic flow alone. Hopefully, the NSW government will see the ugly side of this development, but keep writing these letters against this anti-democratic private "development"...

http://majorprojects.planning.nsw.gov.au/index.pl?action=view_job&job_id=3734

THEY faced the prospect of losing their homes to make way for a transport development. But unlike the Kerrigan family in The Castle, the residents of Leamington Avenue, Newtown, were not forced into a High Court battle to stop the compulsory acquisition of their homes.

After two months of uncertainty, the state government told them yesterday that their strip of historic houses would not be bought and demolished as part of the Western Express rail project.

The Minister for Transport, John Robertson, said work urgently undertaken by Transport NSW established there was no engineering or design basis for acquiring any of the properties.

The vibe in the street was euphoric. But another battle is looming in the neighbourhood.

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We, the people, have to act locally to protect our varied ways of life — how weird or great these are — from shopping dictators. This project has been mostly rejected by the community of people living in the area, rejected by most (if not all) shop owners in the area, rejected by the Marrickville Council, and should be rejected by the RTA on traffic flow alone. Hopefully, the NSW government will see the ugly side of this development, but keep writing these letters against this anti-democratic private "development"...

http://majorprojects.planning.nsw.gov.au/index.pl?action=view_job&job_id=3734

OPPOSITION to an expansion of the Marrickville Metro mall is growing after the council moved to block the developer's plans to buy an adjacent road.

AMP Capital Investors has lodged a Part 3A development application with the Department of Planning to double the retail space of the inner west shopping centre.

The company, which owns property on both sides of Smidmore Street, applied to close the street to turn it into a shopping plaza or build a pedestrian bridge linking the properties if the council refused to sell. But in a meeting on Tuesday night the council resolved not to sell the street and oppose the use of the airspace for the bridge.

Marrickville's deputy mayor, the Greens councillor Fiona Byrne, said the councillors were united in their opposition.

''It's blindingly obvious the expansion is a bad idea that will have detrimental impacts,'' she said. ''We are trying to give voice to our community … If this came through council there is no way this would be approved and we are trying to signal that as clearly as possible to the minister so he does the right thing.''

As a major development, the project is subject to the approval of the Planning Minister, Tony Kelly.

Emily Ritchie, a spokeswoman for the developer, said: ''AMP Capital is disappointed with the council's decision. We had hoped that the council would recognise that the majority of the local community support our development - it is an investment of $165 million into the local economy.''

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Gus: It's $165 million and more that would come out of the local shops in the council neighbourhood eventually. The council and these shops have worked hard to create many village atmosphere from Marrickville to Newtown. The new development only means more traffic jam, less community spirit and more greed. And please AMP Capital don't spread porkies: The majority of the local community is against the development...

FORMER Cronulla coach Ricky Stuart has launched a scathing attack on the Sharks' handling of the Kade Snowden affair, while the club's dream of a $300 million development to ensure its long-term survival is again in jeopardy.

''If you've got monkeys running the zoo, it's always going to be a mess,'' Stuart declared yesterday, in a thinly veiled swipe at club chairman Damian Irvine.

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/shattered-sharks-officially-a-club-in-crisis-20110219-1b07i.html

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Gus: one should remember the "War of the Leagues" (1995? to 2002?) when Murdoch started to collect football clubs — like one collects stamps — to create Super League. Cronulla was one of his pick and News Limited poured money into this club, while others like South Sydney was left on the sideline after the necessary peace merger of Murdoch's SuperLeague and the ARL..... There was a public revolution about the axing of South Sydney and not one protest (45,000 people) but two (second one had more than 80,000 people) huge protests in the streets of Sydney. Court cases fought under the Trade Practices Act (if my memory is correct) was eventually won by South Sydney. Cronulla at the time was sitting pretty with all the cash from Murdoch... The sugar daddy then cut the cash pipeline...

One of the problem encountered by the Cronulla "development" is that the land was granted to the club under the proviso that it would be exclusively entirely for public use such as football and recreation. The other problem is the sea edges of the land are expanses of mangrove-flats on the protected national estate...

The present proposal is basically the same that has been rejected before — as it contravene basic tenure and would destroy the fragile environment used by migrating birds for mating places and rookeries, and all so very important as nurseries for fish...

Oversize greed with bulldozers...

Hopefully the project will be rejected as it should — and the club will find a better smarter way to finance itself...

see toon at top...