Star

Footscray, Yarraville, Braybrook Star

Backing out

By Charlene Gatt

9th February 2010 11:05:23 AM

MARIBYRNONG City Council forked out more than $825,000 in legal fees to fight the Club Edgewater development, it has been revealed.

And in another blow to residents, the council has told Edgewater residents it will not appeal the Club Edgewater Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) decision in the Supreme Court despite having legal grounds to do so.

In a meeting last Wednesday, Maddocks lawyer Maria Marshall said the council had immediately looked into the prospect of an appeal after the decision was handed down on 16 December.

An appeal could only be made in the Supreme Court if the council lodged a request citing a vitiating error – that is, an error in law that is so significant it could have altered the decision – within 28 days of the decision being handed down.

Ms Marshall said the council had grounds to appeal because VCAT ruled the group of shops adjacent to the development site met only three of the four criteria for being a strip shopping centre.

The fourth point dictates that the land had to be zoned for business use. The land in question falls under a comprehensive development zone, which planning and property development manager John Karageorge said was a “holding zone” as the Edgewater estate built up.

“There was not great prospects of success. While we didn’t think it was completely hopeless…but we couldn’t see a strong prospect of success,” Ms Marshall said.

“There’s no guarantee or prospect that we were right or the Tribunal was wrong.”

Mr Karageorge admitted the Club Edgewater hearing had been the council’s most expensive case ever, with more than $825,000 spent on lawyers and expert witnesses on last year’s VCAT hearing and the 2008 Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation hearing.

He said a Supreme Court appeal would, conservatively, cost the council about $80,000 if they won, and double that if they lost.

Both Mr Karageorge and Ms Marshall stressed the decision had not been made based on the legal fees involved.

Residents at the meeting expressed their disappointment at the council’s decision, considering the time they had invested in the case.

“It was us residents that turned up, day in, day out,” Enzo De Fazio from Residents Against Inappropriate Development in Maribyrnong (RAIDiM) said.

Fellow RAIDiM member Margaret Rutherford from the said the Western Bulldogs would have appealed the decision in the Supreme Court with only a 20 per cent chance of success, if they had lost the VCAT hearing.

Star asked the council last week whether it had been councillors or CEO Kerry Thompson who had ultimately made the decision not to proceed with a Supreme Court appeal, but received no response.

In its 65-page decision, VCAT determined that the development was a “positive social outcome for the emerging new suburb of Edgewater”.

Western Bulldogs CEO Campbell Rose told Star last year the development should be ready for trading by 2011.