As we look at doing development on the Garden Suburb site, there are various controls and restrictions that we have to take into account. One of these is the Rural Fire Service Bushfire hazard rules. These rules look at things like how far away a building is from a forest, what access in and out of a property there should be, what bushfire fighting resources are available, etc.
They also stipulate things like the type of materials that need to be used in any new construction; e.g. how fire-retardant they need to be.
The Bushfire consultants have come back to us with some really helpful principles that will shape any future development and construction.
This map shows the affected bushfire hazard areas (in the future - when there is more residential development in the South-Eastern area). The orange shaded area has some restrictions about the type of buildings that can be built there.
There are a few key points that help us as we plan ahead:
We probably can’t ‘expand’ the existing church building - in such a way to increase its seating capacity. Doing that could cause an RFS review of whether a church building can be in that particular spot.
We probably can’t build ‘classrooms’ in that area, since new classrooms will probably have to get built a certain distance away from the bushfire hazard.
We can keep using the existing building for church and classrooms. That’s fine because they are already used for those purposes.
We can build around the existing buildings; things like a foyer and storage shed.
With these principles in place, we have started discussing them with our Architect and working out good solutions for how best to develop on the site to serve the gospel in years to come.