NEWCASTLE developer Keith Stronach has confirmed that Monaco-based Australian billionaire Brett Blundy is a partner in his Sovereign Park redevelopment of the former NBN studio site in Mosbri Crescent, after the shareholding was raised at a protest meeting yesterday.
"Brett Blundy and I have been doing business together on some projects for over 30 years," Mr Stronach said yesterday after the Newcastle Herald was shown ASIC documents showing Mr Blundy as controlling three-quarters of the shares in Crescent Newcastle Ltd, the company developing the site.
Mr Blundy is a retail and property billionaire, whose home address is listed as Monaco on the ASIC documents, and who made his fortune by building the Sanity music chain, and consolidated it with retail outlets Bras'N'Things (sold in 2018), the Lovisa Jewellery chain and interests in other businesses including the Sydney Harbour Bridge's BridgeClimb.
Mr Stronach said the shareholding ownership was "irrelevant" but one of the organisers of yesterday's protest meeting, Louisa Connors, disagreed, saying it showed the project was "not one of 'locals for locals' as Mr Stronach has claimed".
Yesterday's protest meeting in the pocket park opposite the former NBN studios was attended by about 40 people, who heard the latest on the opposition to the residential project.
The Hunter and Central Coast Planning Panel approved a 155-residence development on the site in July last year, but the meeting heard a residents' appeal brought by the Hunter Community Forum was due to be heard next month in the Land and Environment Court.
Ms Connors, representing the Open Newcastle group, and former Newcastle Greens councillor Therese Doyle, representing Hunter Community Forum, addressed the meeting, which heard that questions over the site's mine grouting plan were the main subject of the court appeal, which could only address "matters of law".
Ms Doyle said the summons argued that the planning panel "failed to consider the likely impacts on the surrounding buildings, public spaces and pavements if a subsidence event occurred in the Borehole Seam after the development site had been grouted".
She said a pre-trial mention was set down for February 2 with February 13 to 15 set aside for the case.
As the Herald reported last year, the Stronach development vehicle, Crescent Newcastle Pty Ltd, had to change its original mine subsidence strategy after opposition from the Friends of King Edward Park group, which successfully applied to join a case the Stronach company had brought against City of Newcastle.
Yesterday's meeting heard that an expert's report commissioned from Central Coast civil engineer Dr Philiip Pells found that grouting to support the multi-storey buildings planned for the site could have serious impacts on surrounding properties should instability - a subsidence event or an earthquake - occur.
Dr Pells said that "using Australian slang, the development site would sit 'like a shag on a rock'," while "damage to existing buildings, roads and services may occur" on nearby properties where the mine workings were not grouted.
Asked about this, Mr Stronach said Newcastle mine workings had been grouted for many years and the project's grouting methodology had been approved by Subsidence Advisory NSW (the former mine subsidence board).
The meeting also resolved unanimously to call on City of Newcastle to reinstate a sight-specific reference to the NBN site, which was removed in October last year from the relevant Newcastle Development Control Plan.
City of Newcastle CEO Jeremy Bath said all councillors voted for a staff recommendation to drop the Mosbri reference because the approved project did not need DCP "guidance".
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