Residents opposed to plans for a Werribee housing development fear it will create a traffic nightmare and ruin the neighbouring Riverbend Historical Park.
A permit application has been submitted to Wyndham council for a 49-lot subdivision at 500 Purchas Street, next to the park and facing Heaths Road.
The council has already received 33 objections to the plans.
Werribee District Historical Society secretary Lance Pritchard said his group had serious concerns about any development on the site.
He said he feared the park’s heritage peppercorn trees would be destroyed if the plan gets the green light.
“The access track to the park will become an entrance and exit for the proposed subdivision, resulting in traffic hazards to pedestrians and congestion for park users,” Mr Pritchard said.
“The importance of the park will also be diminished as the site will be unseen from Heaths Road.”
River Run Drive resident Gaylene Boardman said the proposed subdivision was an overdevelopment of the area.
“My concern is having such high-density housing in an area where there’s already such heavy traffic congestion,” she said.
“We need to protect the park. There’s plenty of wildlife and birdlife down there and people walk their dogs and have picnics there on weekends.
“We can’t have any development impacting on the park, so we only hope the council rejects the application because it will spoil the area.”
Council chief executive Kerry Thompson said that at this stage the application asked only for a subdivision permit.
“No submission for the construction of dwellings has been made or approved nor have any large medium-density sites been nominated in the proposal,” she said.
“Consideration is given to heritage significance throughout the planning process. As a result, the applicant has proposed a three-metre-wide reserve, which will be integrated at the rear of the site.”
Ms Thompson said that before a decision was made, submissions would be heard at a town planning forum at which the developer and people who had raised objections, or those who supported the plans, would be given the opportunity to have their say.
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