Newcastle council has accepted a 113-space shortfall in parking at the high-profile EastEnd project after the developer accused it of being "evasive" about its plans to rebuild the Mall parking garage.
The Hunter Central Coast Regional Planning Panel is poised to make a decision next week on Iris Capital's application to develop stages three and four of its EastEnd project.
The final stages of the redevelopment have attracted controversy over their view and heritage impacts, including criticism from an informal alliance of the Newcastle Club, National Trust, Anglican Dean Katherine Bowyer and two inner-city residents groups.
The planning panel deferred making a decision on Iris's development application in March and asked the company to provide more details of the proposed buildings' impact on views.
The panel also asked City of Newcastle to address the car parking required for the development in light of the council demolishing its car park in King Street in 2021.
The council promised in 2021 to reinstate most of the parking spaces lost when the car garage was demolished but has not revealed how or when it will do so.
The NSW government approved a 2017 concept plan for the entire redevelopment project with a parking deficit of 159 spaces on the understanding the King Street car park could absorb additional parking demand.
CJP Consulting Engineers, who form part of Iris's EastEnd development team, disputed the need for Iris to provide more parking in a letter to City of Newcastle in August.
"Despite its resolution to demolish the car park in April 2021 and provide replacement parking on the site, despite numerous requests from Iris and its consultants, CN continues to be evasive in making known its intention for the site," the letter says.
"It can only be concluded that CN is seeking to push its publicly committed parking plans and obligations to reinstate parking on its former car park site across to Iris, and in doing so make its own site feasibility more attractive to itself or a developer."
CJP said in the letter that the council "now wishes to retreat from" its position that Iris would receive a discount on parking requirements.
"As far as Iris are concerned, the King Street car park site is under construction," the letter says.
"As previously requested multiple times, Iris and the project team, as well now as the JRPP ... and the community generally, want to understand what parking CN intends to reinstate on their site per undertakings to the community."
The consultants said another firm, Trans Traffic Survey, had completed an assessment of on- and off-street public parking available to visitors to the EastEnd apartment complex last year.
The survey found 845 parking spaces were unoccupied out of a total of 3304 within 400 metres of the Iris development at the peak time of 2pm on Thursday, July 27.
Of these, 675 were on the street.
The consultant found the number of unoccupied spaces increased to 1782 at peak periods on the following Saturday.
A City of Newcastle assessment report lodged with the regional planning panel says the Iris development application results in a parking deficit of 76 visitor spaces and 37 commercial spaces.
The assessment report concludes that available on- and off-street parking provides enough spaces to cater for the 113-space deficit.
"Following a detailed assessment of the current parking generation, including the applicant's parking study, the proposed modification, including amendments to condition No.19, is acceptable with respect to parking," the assessment report says.
The council report also concludes that Iris's additional information on view impacts shows these impacts are "acceptable".
