Noosa News | 29th August 2015
RATEPAYERS may be spared the hefty price of one of Noosa’s biggest planning fights over Noosa on Weyba after it has been confirmed that two key parcels of land are up for sale with the owners keen to move on with their lives.
Ray White Noosa is advertising the 12.5ha property at 99 Hollett Rd in today’s Noosa News and the company’s salesman John Stamp confirmed that the 110 parcel at 191 Hollett Rd that extends down to Lake Weyba was in the final stages of being put to market.
Mr Stamp said the owners – long-time Noosa locals John and Kathy Hoffman who were co-developers of Noosa on Weyba – were selling up.
The real estate agent said the Hoffmans were not proceeding with Noosa on Weyba and the couple was now intent on getting a good return for the sale value of land. The smaller block will go to auction on site at 2pm on September 27, while expressions of interest will be called for the 191 Hollett Rd site.
This already has approvals for 52 rural residential blocks.
The Noosa on Weyba application that straddles two shire boundaries has the potential to add more than 1000 residential allotments between Noosaville and Weyba Downs. But Northbrook Corporation, operated by developer and local landholder Godfrey Mantle, is part of a NoW planning appeal after the Sunshine Coast Council and the Noosa Council both rejected the application.
Friends of Lake Weyba president Anita Brake said her group “can’t predict the ramifications of the decision by local developer, John Hoffman”.
The actions of the co-developers Hoffman and Mantle have never been transparent. Our organisation can only hope any outcome will be beneficial to the conservation of ecologically sensitive Lake Weyba, its local community and the overall sustainability of the Noosa River system.
Mayor Noel Playford was adopting a wait and see approach to the Hoffman decision to sell up, as a new owner might have the option for the purchase to be finalised pending a successful outcome of the appeal. Cr Playford said there was still an appeals directions hearing set down for early September.
He said if the owners of the blocks withdrew their consent to have their land included in the Noosa on Weyba application, that could prove decisive.
“As Noosa on Weyba is subject to an appeal, I imagine that would be the end of the appeal. But we don’t know for sure. If that’s what happens and the appeal falls over, I think there would obviously be a lot of happy people in the community and Noosa Council would obviously be pleased not to spend ratepayers’ money to defend its planning scheme.”
Mr Mantle’s Mantle Group is yet to respond.