COVID again? What's taking so long? This is all turning into a complete nightmare.
We're into June now, and I get an email from Matt with a response from Cardinia Shire's Planning Department, the first RFI (Request for Further Information) from our development application.
He runs through it with me over the phone. There's nothing out of the ordinary, and Matt has a response up his sleeve already for all the questions.
As it turns out, the majority of what was questioned in the RFI was already answered in the original application, almost like it hadn't been read. It was a bit disappointing.
There were a couple of things we had to do and respond to, but nothing major. The only real issue seemed to be parking.
As we needed a parking waiver for the taproom patrons, council was requesting that we obtain a parking survey from an independent, qualified consultant.
We had thought this might come up but had hoped that the dozens of photos we'd taken and timestamped at set times of the day, showing the parking situation and its minor utilisation, would be enough.
I think Kylie was more disappointed than me, given one of the days we took photos was her birthday. We were camped out for hours to take photos at the set times!
After a bit of back and forth with council and many hours of additional work, we ticked off the items on the RFI and agreed to get a parking survey done.
We engaged a traffic engineer to complete the survey for us, but then… COVID bloody hits again, doesn't it?
Uncle Dan gets on the TV again for one of his pressers and confirms we are indeed in the shit again.
Everyone should be working from home.
Okay, now what do we do?
Not much point getting a traffic survey done if everyone's working from home, is there?
We decided to leave it for a few weeks to see if the situation changed.
It didn't!
We discussed it with the traffic engineer, who agreed to do the survey based on aerial photographs rather than an on-site count. We agreed, and he produced the report based on a period of time when we weren't in lockdown.
Matt submitted it to council, and it looked like we got a green light!
They progressed to the next step of the process: advertising.
We put a sign up on-site, and the application was advertised for two weeks. In addition, council mailed out to all our neighbours to see if anyone wished to object.
Word Is Getting Out!
A week into the advertising period, I was contacted by a reporter from the local paper via our Facebook page.
She was asking if it was us setting up in Pakenham and if we'd be interested in speaking to her about a story she was writing.
I contacted her back, and we arranged to catch up on the phone the following day.
The Objections Arrive
The advertising period passed, and a couple of weeks later, we found out we'd had two objections from neighbouring businesses.
Not direct neighbours, outer neighbours, likely on the edge of the area that was mailed by council.
We received a copy of the letters. To me, they looked suspicious. Both letters were word for word, and formatting-wise, exactly the same. The only difference was the name at the bottom.
I tried to contact both directly to explain what we were doing, but couldn't locate either at the addresses provided. One was vacant, and the other address was incomplete.
Both complaints were around parking, but the way they were written made it sound like they hadn't realised our hours of operation for the taproom were after standard business hours, with the only exception being a few hours on Friday afternoon.
Who wouldn't want a brewery within walking distance?
You've Got to Be Kidding Me… Again!
Heading into mid-November, Matt called.
"Trent, I've got some bad news. I've spoken to council, and they're recommending refusal of our application based on parking."
So now I was again losing my shit.
We'd just paid a traffic engineer to produce a parking survey at the request of council, which came back glowing and clearly showed that even at peak times, there was over 90% of on-street parking available (more than 100 spaces).
Yet they'd decided to ignore the contents of this report?
"Matt, what are our options?"
"VCAT, or try and see if we can have a meeting with them and work through it."
Luckily, it was a Friday afternoon because I needed a drink after this call.
And I did have more than a few…
The following Monday, I reached out to someone in Business Economics at council who I'd spoken to previously and asked if he could help arrange a meeting.
He did, and a couple of weeks later, we had a meeting booked in.
I was looking forward to sitting in a room and working through it. Then I found out that, due to COVID, all meetings were still being held online.
Well, that's not what I wanted.
Towards the end of November, we met with council planning representatives online to discuss the application.
We knew the only way we could get it across the line was to reduce our patron capacity, so we worked through it in the meeting.
To be honest, we didn't get a response of any comfort from the Planning Department.
We went as far as offering to reduce our capacity by almost half (which I originally didn't want to do), but got no commitment or even a response from council.
We even asked what they would consider appropriate, but again, no response.
I asked during the call if any of them had been involved in reviewing a brewery application before, or if they'd been to a brewery before.
None had.
We left the call feeling like nothing had been achieved and, after further discussions, put in writing that we'd be willing to reduce the patron capacity to half and review it 12 months after opening.
Another Phone Call… More Bad News
My phone's ringing.
"Trent, it's Matt. I've still got bad news. They still won't have it. Even at half, they're saying no. It needs to go to a meeting for a final decision, but they're now saying that won't happen until February."
It wasn't a Friday, but I had a drink anyway…
And yes, I did lose my shit again.
Where to from here?
Stay tuned. We're not finished.