A nursing home for poor elderly people, to be located in one of inner Melbourne's most attractive areas, has been approved by the state planning tribunal – after it was refused by Greens and socialist councillors at the behest of scores of residents.
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Clifton Hill's Sambell Lodge is an aged care centre for the disadvantaged run by the Brotherhood of St Laurence.
The run-down centre, built 38 years ago with 43 beds, provides a home for the financially disadvantaged who cannot afford an aged care facility. Half of Sambell Lodge's residents were homeless before finding a place, and many have histories of mental illness and alcohol abuse
The Brotherhood of St Laurence wanted to expand the nursing home to 117 beds, and provide better facilities including individual bathrooms for tenants, who currently use communal toilets and showers.
Yarra Council's planning officers recommended that the nursing home, which is opposite Clifton Hill's attractive Darling Gardens, should go ahead.
But three Greens councillors and socialist councillor Stephen Jolly combined in March to vote down the plan. Almost 60 residents had campaigned against the nursing home.
The councillors who voted against the nursing home said it would hurt the character of the area and its heritage, that the home's "visual bulk" would badly affect the suburb, and that its impact on neighbouring houses was unacceptable.
The Brotherhood appealed the council's decision at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. On Tuesday, the tribunal overturned Yarra's decision.
One Yarra councillor who supported the Brotherhood's proposal estimated it had cost ratepayers at least $50,000 and perhaps up to $100,000 to fight the nursing home plan.
The tribunal ruled that the home's downsides, which include knocking down a historic 1905 former Sunday School on the site, were outweighed by it positive social impacts.
"The social benefit provided by the establishment of a new 117-bed nursing home for financially disadvantaged persons outweighs the negative impact to the significance of the heritage place, caused by the demolition of the former church hall," VCAT members Michael Deidun and Stephen Axford wrote in their ruling.
They ruled that, subject to some changes to the building's setbacks and design, the proposed nursing home was "an appropriate response to the character of the area [and] the significance of the heritage place".
Residents had also argued that the proposed development would create traffic "chaos", and raised the possibility that ambulances would not be able to visit the nursing home because of cars arriving at and leaving an adjacent primary school.
The VCAT members found there were "reasonably orderly" traffic movements. "We did not observe the type of 'chaos' that might be observed in other school locations," the members wrote.
A number of residents had also objected to the Brotherhood of St Laurence's plan to cut down a large 100-year-old box elder tree, in order to create more housing for residents.
The tribunal's members wrote that, while it would have been "technically possible to design a development around the retention of the tree", it was not practical given the number of residents to be housed.
Trees to be planted as part of the project would "partly mitigate the loss of the established tree", they wrote.
