Brisbane City Council cutting parkland by stealth: 30 Tottenham St, Woolloongabba case study

I'm not sure how many people will be interested in this, but I figured it's worth documenting briefly as it's just one of many examples over recent years where the council has quietly removed future parkland from the City Plan without really telling anyone.

Since around 2009, Brisbane City Council has been progressively acquiring properties on the corner of Carl Street and Tottenham Street in the Buranda locality of Woolloongabba (across the road from the Buranda Woolworths shopping centre) to create a new public park.

This park was added to the city plan zoning maps around the same time as all the surrounding streets (from Wolseley Street to Regent Street) were rezoned for high-density development.

Since that rezoning, a lot of the low-density detached houses have been progressively redeveloped into highrises. The new park was deemed necessary because council planners identified that all those new apartment residents needed some local public green space to make life in a tiny concrete box more bearable. Without this park, the whole precinct would eventually feel like a concrete jungle.

Back when I was the councillor representing this area, we successfully advocated for over a million dollars to be spent to upgrade this space as more properties on Tottenham St were acquired to expand the park. It now includes a toilet block, picnic facilities etc.

The long-term intention – as indicated in the City Plan, local neighbourhood plan etc – was that 30 Tottenham Street would also be acquired and added to the park. If my memory is correct, the council was waiting until the elderly resident who lived there passed away, and when the site came up for sale the council would make an offer.

Adding 30 Tottenham St to the park would make it large enough to accommodate a dog off-leash area, or some more kickaround space for ball games, or a community garden, or maybe even a court for basketball or pickle ball.

But now, inexplicably, as part of its 'City Plan Major Amendment Package R' the council is quietly rezoning 30 Tottenham Street from parkland ('Open Space') to high-density development ('District Centre').

This change has been buried in a city plan amendment that mostly relates to rezoning industrial sites for higher density (out of the dozens and dozens of properties affected by this city plan amendment, 30 Tottenham St is the only one that's being rezoned from parkland to high density development).

It won't create any new housing – it'll be years and years before the site is commercially viable to redevelop, at which point the old house would most probably be replaced with a commercial tower comprising shops, offices, medical suites or hotel rooms rather than residential apartments.

But the zoning change does mean the property won't be added to the park, and local residents will miss out on an expanded green space.

Interestingly, it also means that the sale value of 30 Tottenham St will probably increase from its current $1.4 million (approx.) to perhaps $3 million or $4 million, because now you'll theoretically be allowed to build a highrise on it (the neighbouring property at 24 Tottenham St might also increase in value because its development potential increases if you could amalgamate the two blocks to build a larger highrise).

I imagine the council is doing this to save money. The LNP have mismanaged the council budget for many years, and are now running a significant deficit; not having to buy the block for parkland saves them $1.5 million.

I know it's only a 600m2 property, and some people might understandably question why it matters. But this is a high-density inner-city neighbourhood where every square metre of green space is important, and without this block being amalgamated into the park, you don't have enough buffer room to squeeze in a basketball court/skate park/dog off-leash area.

Long-term, there will be plenty of apartment residents in the neighbourhood advocating for a dog off-leash area or other park facilities which simply can't be accommodated within the existing park footprint. As a result, those residents will likely choose to drive to other parks further away, reinforcing car-dependency and increasing local traffic issues.

Currently, most of the residents in this precinct of Buranda are politically disengaged renters, so the LNP administration knows most people won't even notice the change, particularly as it's buried in a citywide planning amendment rather than a direct amendment to the local neighbourhood plan (which more Woolloongabba residents might have thought to look at).

The local councillor, Fiona Cunningham, has really let down her constituents by not pushing back against this rezoning, or even letting residents know this is happening.

If the council had publicly advertised this removal of parkland from the city plan and drawn residents' attention to it, they would almost certainly have received public pushback, but they're doing it as quietly as possible and hoping it flies under the radar.

This is happening again and again across our city – past council administrations identified land that should be converted into public parkland to cater for population growth, but now the LNP is surreptitiously removing those parks from the city plan one amendment at a time.

It's not too late for this proposed change to be knocked on the head. If residents want this block turned into parkland rather than left in private ownership, you could email coorparoo.ward@bcc.qld.gov.au and ask Councillor Fiona Cunningham to have this zoning change for 30 Tottenham St removed from the major amendment package.

Brisbane's mainstream media outlets no longer have the capacity to cover local issues like this. I reckon no-one would even be aware that Woolloongabba/Buranda is losing this future parkland expansion unless I took the time to read through these rather dense city plan amendment documents. So to support more writing like this, you might like to subscribe to my newsletter, or just make a one-off contribution of a couple bucks.