MORNINGTON MP David Morris is pressuring the state government uses planning laws to stop the former Mount Eliza Business School site being developed as an aged care home and retirement “village”.
Mr Morris called on Planning Minister Richard Wynne in state parliament last week to rezone the Ryman Healthcare site in Kunyung Road as green wedge.
The move would prevent the company using the 8.9 hectare site for a retirement village and head off its latest attempt to win approval for a smaller development.
“This government brags a lot about protecting the green wedge,” Mr Morris said. “We have had lots of words. It is about time those words were put into action, and we have seen precious little in the way of actions on this site.”
Mr Morris said Ryman’s original proposal was for eight four-storey buildings, three three-storey buildings, 272 apartments, 115 nursing beds and 362 car spaces over 23,000 square metres “all outside the urban growth boundary”.
Ryman says its new, reduced version is for 104 independent apartments, 35 assisted living suites and 82 care beds.
Mr Morris said Mr Wynne had ignored his pleas over the past 17 months to “call in” the project saying in February last year that he “would look into it” and again, in June and October, stonewalling over pleas to act.
“This rezoning [to green wedge] is supported by an overwhelming majority of the community,” Mr Morris said. “It is supported by an overwhelming majority of the new [Mornington Peninsula Shire] council as well.
“Let us see if this minister is actually fair dinkum, if all the words that we have heard about protecting the green wedge—and we have seen zero actions in Mount Eliza—are fair dinkum or not. I do ask him to act and act as expeditiously as possible to finally protect this land.”
First published in the Mornington News – 10 August 2021
