By Virginia Simpson-Young. Bulletin 3/2025, May
I became interested in this development after seeing a flyer, sticky-taped to a Forest Lodge power pole, about a Change.org petition addressing a range of concerns for residents living near the proposed development site. The petition is called Join Forest Lodge community opposing overdevelopment of the Junction Street FDC site. The organisers write that they ‘don’t want to stop good development that positively contributes to our community and provides public benefit’ and that they ‘accept the need for housing, but redevelopment must be done in a way that enhances and benefits local community and place.
An area of concern expressed by the petitioners is the apparent lack of fit between the scale of the development and the surrounding area – a heritage conservation area with predominantly one- and two-storey terraces. They make suggestions for changes to the proposed development to improve the fit. They also call for a greater emphasis on design excellence and quality. I suggest you check out the petition, which addresses these issues much better than I can.
In this article, I will look at some of the contexts for this development, which has been around in one form or another for well over a decade. I will then raise some specific concerns and for some of those, consider some possible solutions.
A disclaimer: the Glebe Society management committee has not formulated a position on this development. So, the views here are my own and don’t represent a position taken by the Glebe Society.
Application number SSD-75493483 by Corio Projects Pty Ltd to develop the Junction Street site as a state significant development (SSD) has been made to Planning NSW under the State Environmental Planning Policy (Planning Systems) 2021 (the SEPP). The development has been submitted under the ‘seniors housing’ category, which is defined in Section 28 of Schedule 1 to the SEPP. To qualify as seniors housing, the development must include a residential care facility (RCF). The RCF in the Junction Street development proposal would accommodate ten people. The remainder of the development will be independent living units (ILU), 71 in total.
If this development sounds familiar, it may be because it was proposed to the City of Sydney in 2016, bundled with proposed changes to the Sydney Local Environmental Plan (LEP) negotiated with Council.[2] These negotiations had begun several years before, when the LEP was being drafted. City of Sydney was pleased with the site-specific amendments made to the LEP to accommodate the development at 2-32 Junction Street, but, as we can see, the development didn’t proceed. In September 2017, the Glebe Society’s then Planning Convenor, Neil Macindoe, wrote a succinct yet highly informative Bulletin article on the site’s planning history.
The proposed SSD is called Forest Lodge Integrated Seniors Living. It is described as a ‘seniors living development with a residential aged care facility including 10 beds as well as 71 independent living units. The proposal also includes a publicly accessible open space expanding on the existing Larkin Street Reserve’.
Presumably to keep red tape to a minimum, Planning NSW does not require much documentation at this early stage, so details of the development are scant. In one of the three short documents provided on the applications’ site, Wattletree Planning, writes that ‘the current preliminary proposal plan, prepared by WMK Architecture is included within Appendix 1’ of their SEARs request.[3] It is not, however, included in the online version; ditto for the Preliminary Construction Cost Estimate, although they provide an estimate of $80,290,876 million (ex GST).
These missing documents might have helped visualise the development. In their absence, we have the fairly schematic drawings from a flyer dropped in letterboxes:
We can glean a little more information from the Pre-Development Application, submitted in September last year, which gives a succinct description of the Development:
Construction of a single building, integrated with and expanding the existing mid-century building[4] located in the centre of the site on Junction Street. The proposed 5-storey building will include 71 ILUs, a residential care facility and parking. The site layout includes two through-site links and an open space area to the rear of the building, effectively expanding the existing Larkin Reserve.
The site is located in the Hereford-Forest Lodge Heritage Conservation Area (HCA) as defined by the Sydney LEP 2012. The existing Federation-era building, built c.1901 as mentioned above, was initially classified as ‘detracting’ from the heritage values of the HCA but was reclassified as ‘contributory’ after the heritage assessment made that recommendation.
The first step in the application process for this development type is to prepare the environmental impact statement (EIS). Planning NSW requires developers to request a copy of the (Planning) Secretary’s Environmental Assessment Requirements (SEARs), which will help the developers know what they need to cover in the EIS for their State Significant Development (SSD)[5]. In response to Willowtree’s SEARs request[6], the SEARs tailored for Section 18 Seniors Housing was provided.
The second part of Schedule 1, Section 28 of the SEPP states that the section ‘does not apply to development on land within the area of the City of Sydney.’ As the Junction Street site is in the City of Sydney area, it is unclear to me why the development application is being lodged under this section. It may be an issue of timing; an update to the residents’ petition was made on 20 January 2025: ‘The good news is that under changes to planning laws, the City of Sydney Council will be consent authority for any seniors proposal.’ Assuming the project goes forward as a SSD, I imagine the State government will have the final say.
Aged care issues
An initial attraction of this development is that it purports to provide housing for older people. Independent living units (ILU) are attractive to older people who may need no or only low level aged care services but no longer want to look after a garden or make expensive repairs to their homes. To my knowledge, there’s only one such residence in Glebe-Forest Lodge. Some older people find themselves needing a lot of support, and a residential aged care facility (aka nursing home) may be their only option. Unfortunately, currently they need to leave Glebe-Forest Lodge because we have no aged care facilities here. So, while this development appears to at least partially address this problem, it may not.
Looking first at the RCF component: as mentioned, a condition of approval for a Section 28 development is having a RCF. In this case, a ten-bed facility is proposed. I don’t know how they arrived at this number of beds, but there’s good reason to believe that this is too few for the facility to be viable, and this is demonstrated in annual surveys of aged care service providers.[7] Consequently, it is very unlikely that such a development will be able to meet the needs of people requiring high-level care.
The developer, Corio Projects, has another SSD Seniors Housing application thas progressed further than Junction Street in the assessment process: Rosebery Seniors Living Development. According to an industry magazine, Corio has also developed ‘Broadlands’, resort-style communities for the over-50s, located at the Central Coast, Tamworth, Muswellbrookand and Harrington’.[8]
Extending Orphan School Creek biodiversity corridor
I have a number of concerns about the proposal that relate to climate change. The Forest Lodge residents’ petition points out that, due to the climate crisis, it’s essential that the ‘development achieves the highest levels of environmental sustainability’. At the same time, the predations of increasingly destructive weather events necessitate new levels of protection from floods, heatwaves and so on. Heatwaves are particularly dangerous for older people whose bodies are less resilient than they once were. Similarly, it’s more important than ever to increase the amount of plant life, including trees for shade, and to increase biodiversity and create habitat for animals in our urban areas.
For reasons of space and time, I’ll narrow in on an opportunity afforded by the proposed development to enhance urban biodiversity. The opportunity is to incorporate the Orphan School Creek biodiversity corridor into the development.
The segment of the Orphan School Creek corridor between Bridge Road and where the Orphan School Creek flows into Johnstons Creek at Wigram Road has been revegetated (compare 1949 and today, below), creating a diverse wildlife corridor:
If the segment of the Orphan School Creek corridor between Bridge Road and the University of Sydney were revegetated, wildlife could use this corridor to reach the green spaces of the University of Sydney. This point was made in a submission on the planning proposal exhibited in 2016.[9] The report quotes from a submission that refers to Green Corridors:
The Orphan School Creek corridor extends from the Glebe foreshore walk and Johnstons Creek corridor and passes through the site, but is not referenced [in the 2016 planning proposal]. This corridor should extend further into Forest Lodge to link up to Parramatta Road and the University of Sydney. Planning controls should be strengthened to ensure the creek is enhanced as a nature reserve.
The comment goes on to suggest a means whereby this segment of the Orphan School Creek corridor could be planned and completed: ‘A broader masterplan for the future green corridor between Bridge Road, Pyrmont Bridge Road and Sparkes / Arundel Streets could include dedications at 300 Bridge Road, 12 Larkin Street and the rear of 34 Junction Street’.
[1] Request for industry-specific SEARs: proposed seniors living development property at 2-32 Junction Street Forest Lodge,. Willowtree Planning, 3 September 2024.
[2] City of Sydney, Planning Proposal Sydney Local Environmental Plan 2012: 2-32 Junction Street, Forest Lodge, September 2016
[3] Request for industry-specific SEARs: proposed seniors living development property at 2-32 Junction Street Forest Lodge,. Willowtree Planning, 3 September 2024.
[4] According to the 2017 heritage assessment of the site, the building was erected c.1901 (Weir Phillips Heritage, 2017, 16 June. Heritage Assessment: 2-32 Junction Street Forest Lodge)
[5] https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-03/state-significant-development-guidelines.pdf
[6] Request for industry-specific SEARs: proposed seniors living development property at 2-32 Junction Street Forest Lodge,. Willowtree Planning, 3 September 2024.
[7] The Aged & Community Care Providers Association (2024). State of the Sector: Aged Care 2024.; and Sutton, Ma, Yang, Woods, & Lin (2024). Australia’s Aged Care Sector: Full-Year Report 2023–24. UTS Ageing Research Collaborative.
[8] Renee McKeown. ‘Corio Group Plans Seniors Living in Sydney’s Inner-South’. The Urban Developer. 5 June 2024.
[9] Submissions summary, Central Sydney Planning Committee, 30 November 2017, Item 13, Attachment F.
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