By BELINDA PARKES
With supplied pic: Some of the affected residents of the Oasis complex. The hill behind them could soon be covered in up to 62 shipping containers to be rented out as storage.
UP to 62 steel shipping containers will soon be the view for 500 residents of the Oasis Complex and Raffles Aged Care facility in South Tweed, if the council approves a storage facility on the hill overlooking their homes.
The development is being proposed as part of a joint venture between Expo Park BagcorpPty Ltd and Bagcorp Pty Ltd, owned by high-profile business identities Robert Richards, Gillian Richards and Alan Blundell.
The developers are hoping to provide the storage containers for lease to tradespeople, small business owners and local residents but some of the residents in the Oasis Complex are horrified at the impact it will have on their home values and lifestyle.
John Wray, chairman of the community association for precinct six which is the closest to the site behind the BCF store in Greenway Drive, says it will be a visual eyesore, noisy and potentially dangerous due to the steep curved road access near homes and no apparent monitoring of what is being stored in the containers.
“For most of the people here, the biggest fear is that most of their money is in the value of their properties,” Mr Wray said.
“People have put their life savings into their homes, but who will want to buy these houses looking at all these shipping containers?”
He said many of the residents had bought in the gated complex because of its security and peacefulness, but now they faced spending their twilight years looking at shipping containers and hearing people coming and going into their metal storage facility seven days a week, from as early as 7 in the morning until 6 o’clock at night.
“We think it will affect 70 per cent of the total Oasis complex visually,” Mr Wray said.
“Even from the public park it will be visible.
“It’s the highest point in South Tweed, it couldn’t be in a worse place.”
In their development application the owners acknowledge the proposed storage facility ‘is not the best case use for the site’ and say they intend to open this business on a ‘short-term, somewhat temporary commercial basis only’.
They have indicated they want to remove or relocate it at some time in the future, when a more permanent and higher-yielding commercial venture can be sustained on the site.
However the residents are wary at the words ‘temporary’ which they say could mean decades and there was no guarantee of the timeframe they would have before the shipping containers would be gone.
The shipping container storage facility has drawn at least 104 individual letters of opposition to the council, as well as a 200-signature petition and further objections from the Raffles Aged Care facility.
Representatives of the Oasis complex have met with council planners to voice their concerns and will make their plea to councillors at next week’s community access meeting.
“We are hoping commonsense prevails,” said Mr Wray.
“We can’t think of a worse planning application than what they are trying to impose on 240 dwellings.”
