Byron Shire Council will this week consider cutting a metre off the nine-metre restriction on properties behind Wategos Beach,where houses sell for up to $23 million.
Wategos is home to only 90 houses.Danielle Smith
The residential area of Wategos is made up of about 90 houses built on a steep hill below the Cape Byron Lighthouse,which marks Australia’s most easterly point,and Labor councillor Asren Pugh said residents were concerned a trend towards larger developments was incompatible with the area.
“They are creating houses that are way out of proportion to the surrounding environment,” Pugh said of the new homes.
“On top of pushing right to the nine-metre limit,and in some cases going over,they are also undertaking massive excavation into the hillside.
“The wealth of people building there now is absolutely massive. The house prices there are out of control.
Construction under way at Wategos.
“We’re not West Hollywood. We don’t need massive mansions. We need people to enjoy Byron Bay for what it is.”
Pugh will ask council on Thursday to look at reducing the height limit for Wategos developments to eight metres and has sought a report from council on efforts to limit excavation into the Wategos hillside.
Wategos Beach Protection Association president Miranda Chance said sea-change buyers drawn to the area during COVID-19 had brought “a metro mentality” to their house designs,and the extensive excavations such designs required were causing dust and noise for neighbours,and damaging roads. They also raised issues around drainage for the natural springs that ran down the slope to the beach.
“When you look at what has been built previously … the houses worked with the contours of the land,” she said. “They were nestled into the cove.
Miranda Chance and husband Gio D’Ercole at home at Wategos.Danielle Smith
“Now,they dig out the whole boundary and excavate the entire block … they are changing the natural watercourses,and the infrastructure is not here to deal with that.”
Former Byron Shire mayor Oliver Dunne,who has lived at Wategos since the 1970s,said old-school weekenders in the beachside suburb were being replaced with bigger,concrete-heavy houses that were out of step with the area,which is a popular daytrip spot for locals,tourists and surfers.
“Wategos has this mystical appeal,” he said. “There’s a lot more to this place than millionaires and billionaires … this is a beach that will not be privatised in any way.”
He said knocking a metre off the height limit and limiting excavation would stop developers squeezing concrete,multistorey houses onto steep sites that were more suited to the lighter-framed houses traditionally built in the area.
Oliver Dunne has lived at Wategos for almost 50 years.Danielle Smith
“With a nine-metre height limit and permissive excavation,you can get a building looking like five storeys easily on a steep block,” he said.
“They are excavating off the street straight into the land nine or 10 metres[then building up] and I don’t think that’s acceptable.”
But Byron Shire Mayor Michael Lyon said he did not agree with making a special rule just for Wategos,especially given height limits were being increased to 11.5 metres in other parts of the shire.
Wategos residents are worried about large new developments behind the beach.
“It’s a bit unfair,” he said. “You can talk about excavation,and make rules about digging down and into the hillside,but why have one residential area in the shire that wants to go to eight metres?
“[When you] have a building that’s only a few years old,and someone else buys it and knocks it down and builds it again,I’d suggest that’s an issue of people having too much wealth – it’s different to the issue of what the height limit should be.”
The council considered changing its local environment plan to reduce the Wategos height limit last year,but decided to investigate further before doing so. It has already restricted the size of basements to 50 square metres to stop developers gaming the rules to get extra floor space through excavation.
In a briefing note for councillors before Thursday’s meeting,council staff said some of the “basement storage areas” approved at Wategos may have since been put to a different use,and “could be found wanting in terms of compliance”.
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