Lewisham’s monster scare – The Courier
15 Jun 09 by Sam Worrad
The campaign against the 14-storey Lewisham towers development on Old Canterbury Rd continues to gain momentum, though Marrickville Labor claims it is at the centre of a scare campaign.
Labor councillor Mary O’Sullivan said the Greens were “doing their best to portray local and state Labor as beholden to developer donations, but it is not true”.
“We are as critical as anybody of the proposal because it is singularly inappropriate for the area, and where we differ is how the proposal should be assessed,” she said.
Marrickville Labor Mayor Sam Iskandar agreed scare tactics had been used.
“It is wrong to say that there is a monster coming and that it is inevitable,” he said.
“I will say again, we don’t support it and we never supported it.”
At tonight’s Marrickville Council meeting, the Greens will move two motions – one calling for the council to commission a master plan for the precinct between Old Canterbury Rd and the goods railway line in Lewisham and a second motion calling for the development to be assessed by the council and not the Planning Minister.
The second motion was voted down by a combination of Labor and independent councillors in March.
“If the councillors are listening to the community and know the depth of feeling about this issue, I would hope the motions can get through,” Greens councillor Max Phillips said.
There has been more than 650 hits on the http://www.nolewishamtowers.org website, where Marrickville’s Greens and Independent councillors Dimitrios Thanos and Morris Hanna have registered their opposition to the towers.