Private hospital, new vets, childcare centre, parking for 66 cars – $7.5m build – Kurrajong village

A private hospital and day surgery, childcare centre for 80 children, health consulting rooms, a vet hospital, and two dog parks, plus café facilities, are on the drawing board and before Hawkesbury Council as yet another developer takes a tilt at building a large development in Kurrajong.

Planned development site – vets on left, bark park on right – pic taken in December – courtesy Google Maps

The move comes as a new planned shopping centre in Kurrajong was just this last week firmly knocked back by the Hawkesbury Local Planning Panel (HLPP), chiefly because it was too large and its design didn’t fit well into the area.

This new planned development which runs at just over two hectares and would be built on land currently occupied by the Kurrajong Vet Hospital, the current dog park, and running down at the back of those properties, aswell as swallowing landmark house Minimbah, is now before Hawkesbury Council as a Development Application. There are two parcels of land – 10 Old Bells Line of Road, which is where the house sits, and 16, site of Kurrajong Vet Hospital.

With an estimated cost of just over $7.5m, the development will be reviewed by Hawkesbury Council staff who will provide a report and recommendation, and then it will have to go before the HLPP if more than 10 people raise objections.

The two parcels of land are owned by a company called BLR 1823 Pty Ltd and the planned development has been a while in the making. Back in July 2020, a representative from Deerubbin Local Aboriginal Land Council undertook an Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment for the land owners and had no objection to the proposed redevelopment of the land.

A plan of the proposed development…

The plan is for four buildings on the five-acre site, with the existing house at 10 Old Bells Line of Road (Minimbah) to be converted for use as health consulting rooms.

A part one and part two-storey veterinary hospital is proposed to replace the existing vet hospital on the five-acre site.

The plan also includes a part one and part two-storey centre for childcare too – which the developers say would “assist in addressing the unmet demand for childcare places”.

There would be parking for 20 cars at the childcare centre, with a total of 66 car parking spots across the whole site.

Four rooms planned for the childcare centre would sit beside a 590 square metre outdoor play area, and the new building would also include a kitchen, dining room and staff room on the first floor.

There would also be a private hospital and day surgery of just over 2000 square metres in size.

The current so-called Bark Park would essentially be retained for small dogs, with another Bark Park for larger dogs built on the northern side of the hospital and vets hospital.

Trees will be removed, as will vegetation, if the plan gets the go-ahead, but the developers plan to plant some replacement trees.

A Koala Assessment Report has been carried out and they say, “the site does not contain areas of optimal koala habitat”.

They also say the development includes, “a generous landscape set back to Old Bells Line of Road to provide a high-quality streetscape outcome and minimise the visual impact of the surrounding road network”.

The site would be serviced by an onsite sewage treatment plant and sewage pump station, which would be important because Kurrajong does not have a sewage system.

The DA – its ID is DA0351/22 is on the Hawkesbury Council website – is in for initial review at the moment and members of the public should be able to make comments in the near future.

We will, of course, keep you up-to-date on developments.

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