Developer Edge Living has finally won an 18-month fight with council and residents to build the Lumiere tower in the South Perth 'station precinct'.
The council's new Town Planning Scheme, drafted to encourage development, allowed unlimited heights in the Mill Point area around the long hoped-for train station.
The council was taken aback by the rush of interest from property developers and scrambled to bring back height limits, but not before approvals went through for multiple towers of up to 38 storeys, including $60 million Lumiere.
In February, a residents' Supreme Court appeal overturned the Lumiere approval, with the 29-storey building not meeting requirements for a 50-50 residential-commercial mix.
In March, Edge reapplied with a 44-storey design, adding 147 serviced apartments, as these counted as "commercial". This would have made the building one of the 10 tallest in Perth.
In July, the panel knocked it back over height, setback, land use and traffic concerns but Edge appealed to a state tribunal, which sent the matter back to the panel.
The panel on Wednesday gave approval for a 34-storey version after a six-hour meeting featuring a last-ditch challenge by residents and the City of South Perth on a technical issue.
Local action group spokeswoman Vicki Redden said the developer wrongly counted toilets and kitchens as commercial space.
"The council got legal advice that morning after we alerted them to it that morning, so we presented that and really all the panel did was get angry about it and say that could be fixed up later," she said.
"Nothing was going to stop them.
"There are now five mega high-rise buildings approved for the station precinct which has no station.
"The others – Aurelia, Civic Heart, Pinnacles and Glasshouse – were all approved before the Supreme Court case and are all predominantly residential buildings in a town planning scheme that requires a 50-50 mix.
"But we can't take them all to the Supreme Court.
"Meanwhile the state government has dropped the South Perth train station from its budget forecasts."
Department of Transport projections showed that in the next 10 years the only transport-related development for South Perth was associated with the existing ferry, she said.
South Perth chief executive Geoff Glass said both city staff and councillors had strongly opposed this result but the city would not take the matter to court.
While it did believe the mix of serviced apartments, office units and restaurant proposed would enhance the precinct as an employment destination it did not support the height of the development.
Spokesman Paul Plowman said Edge Living was "very happy" with the decision.
"It reinforces the integrity of the existing Town Planning Scheme," he said.
"We also made a conscious choice to lower the size from 44 to 34 storeys as we understand height is of concern to people in the area.
"This will now be smaller in scale and in height than Civic Heart and Zone Q."
He said the matter of the kitchens and toilets counting as residential space being raised in the meeting was "disappointing".
"The DAP was less than impressed that suddenly this was raised basically halfway through the meeting when the application had been with them for several weeks," he said.
"But the DAP believed it was a resolvable issue and set a condition, one of more than 30, that we have to satisfy the council we have met the required plot ratio. We don't need to change the external of the building to do that redesign.
"It's been a very long road [but] this building is exceptional in terms of design and in terms of what it can add to amenity and as the DAP chairman said, it will become a benchmark."
TPS Amendment 46, which the council hopes will reintroduce height limits, is still being considered by the WA Planning Commission.
The life of Lumiere: Perth's most controversial high-rise
- May 2015: City of South Perth recommends approval to Development Assessment Panel: DAP gives approval.
- February 2016: residents' Supreme Court appeal overturns 29-storey approval. Edge already has backup plan.
- March 2016: Edge reapplies to council with 44-storey design
- July 2016: Council recommends DAP refusal over height, setback, land use and traffic concerns; DAP knocks back development
- July 2016: Edge launches State Administrative Tribunal appeal; SAT orders DAP to reconsider
- October 2016: DAP approves a 34-storey design. Council concedes defeat.
