Lane Cove, Hunters Hill and Linley Point residents in Sydney are protesting the impending Lane Cove Council approval of a gigantic boat storage facility to be built on public parkland on Cunningham's Reach on the Lane Cove River. The Lane Cove Council has adopted an approach of minimum notification of this $3.3M development on waterside public parkland presumably because of the inevitable public outrage they knew would erupt.

Here are a few of the questions that residents are asking……

• Why does this “shed” need to be a 1284 sq m 60 metre long 10.6 metre high megastructure? It is the height of a typical three story building and more than three times the scale of the boatshed it replaces.

• Why can't Sydney University rebuild a shed to store their boats on their existing leased space on Burns Bay and place other facilities like meeting rooms video review rooms and the like on S.U. owned land or on S.U leased site at Black Wattle Bay?
  
  
• Why have Sydney University not documented consideration of alternative sites for their mega shed? There are at least 10 potential sites yet Sydney University claims to have only considered 3. It has documented none and just made a grab for the best and most accessable piece of waterfront park land they could find.

• How can Lane Cove Council accept a development proposal with such plainly inadequate consideration of parking? No additional parking places despite likely 30 additional cars plus boat trailers injected into already busy and limited on site parking.

• Why is the community being robbed of public open space & parkland? 60% of our park is alienated by this proposed building. The non alienated usable park land area is less than one third of a football pitch. Effectively under this proposal the park is lost to community access forever.

• With increasing building density including 200 proposed new units less than half a Km from this park shouldn't Lane Cove Council be acquiring and retaining public parkland rather than having to consider giving it away for the exclusive use of a small minority.

• Why should the Council be asked to approve this development when it would destroy the environmentally pristine river gateway to the Lane Cove National Park ?

• Why have the community of Lane Cove not been advised about this massive alienation of public land?

• Why did Lane Cove Council try to rush approval of this mega shed through the Council Meeting on Monday 3rd August without community discussion?