Comments from a Concerned Knoxfield Resident

Inappropriate housing development in Knoxfield

 

I write in support our Kathryn Road neighbours in opposing the 2-storey townhouse development proposed for 61 Kathryn Road in particular and recurrent subdivision and unit development in general, for the Knoxfield area.

We have lived in Kathryn Road, Knoxfield since 1979 and have always treasured the mature treescape and the company of the birds and animals which frequent our garden.

Over the past several years we have been increasingly concerned at the proliferation of multi-unit developments on previously single home blocks in our area and the resultant massacre of our mature trees and have noticed a significant decrease in wildlife in our garden.   By their very nature, unit developments attract a transient community of renters who care little (or at least far less) for their surrounds than homeowners – we find this all the time at our end of Kathryn Road where the rented houses are always the messy ones and the ones holding the noisy parties long into the night.

Knox Council purport to be in tune with the maintenance of the special environment by which we are lucky enough to be surrounded (for the moment) and have undertaken to protect same.   They could certainly have fooled us!    Double storey houses are NOT part of the Knoxfield character, particularly 4 on a single home block.  Take a look at the ugly new double storey house next door to this proposed development in Anne Road or another example further east up on the bend of Kathryn Road (square pseudo Georgian, double storey, concrete front “garden”, with multi coloured front door and shutters) – quite out of character with Knoxfield, they belong in Rowville or Wheelers Hill.

Aside from the damage being done to our leafy suburb, another concern is the extra traffic around that already tight roundabout (Anne and Kathryn Roads) and the impact the development will have on that strip of local shops and their customer parking spaces;  it is already often difficult/dangerous to reverse out of them due to traffic flow, let alone having 4 large houses and their cars opposite.

We are all aware of the need for more housing Melbourne-wide and if done carefully and tastefully, multi-unit developments need not be a disaster for Knoxfield or any other heavily treed neighbourhood.   Case in point, is the recent unit development in Kathryn Road just west of the Anne Road roundabout – single storey, with at least some of the trees having survived the builders.

We hope the Council will see beyond the greed of builders and landowners and take steps to protect the beauty and essential ethos of the Knoxfield area.