Newcastle Inner City Residents Alliance is right to be protective of views to and from the centre of Australia's second-oldest city.
The group helped fight a successful battle with the state government 10 years ago about height limits in the Hunter Street Mall redevelopment and has now revived those concerns as Iris Capital asks for more height in the final two stages of the project on top of that approved in 2017 under a concept plan.
Iris is far from the first developer seeking to stretch height limits on apartment or office buildings in the inner-city, but the mall heritage precinct is particularly sensitive to tall structures, especially if they affect views of The Hill and its landmark cathedral.
It is often said that no one owns a view, but the public can rightly expect planning sensitivity when it comes to the city skyline.
Looking the other way, members of the venerable Newcastle Club, residents of the heritage-listed Segenhoe apartment tower and others also will be interested in the deliberations of planning authorities.
At first glance, the Iris proposal for a new public square appears to open a view corridor from harbour to cathedral, especially considering that corridor has been blocked until now by an uninspiring commercial building and, until recently, the council's own unsightly car park.
NICRA fears the new design crowds out an uninterrupted view of the full cathedral and does not appear to allow for the council to achieve its "Stairway to Heaven" idea of a grand staircase from harbour to cathedral.
The Newcastle Herald asked the council whether it was still committed to the stairway and received a noncommittal response: "An architectural design competition presented an exciting opportunity to bring together a shared vision between CN and Iris Capital to complete the final stages of the city's revitalised East End including the vision for a public corridor to connect the Harbour to Cathedral Park."
The council's negotiations with Iris to redevelop the car park site while replacing public parking and embracing the stairway idea broke down a year ago, and it is now unclear how either will proceed. NICRA says this was a missed opportunity.
City of Newcastle is not the approval authority for the Iris application, but its assessment of the development application will be crucial when the Hunter and Central Coast Regional Planning Panel makes the call on whether, as NICRA argues, it represents a "major over-development".
The concept approval set community expectations for what the EastEnd development would look like and how it would interact with the surrounding landscape.
The first stage of the redevelopment has been widely praised for its architectural merit and reuse of old buildings. It is now up to planning authorities to ensure the final stages do not detract from what, until now, has been a relatively sympathetic treatment of the city's heritage heart.
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