Woolworths & the Lane Cove Experience

Hi,This is a letter I sent to the Echo last week re Woolworths which didn't get get published. Thought you might be interested.Best wishes,Victor

Many people know about what Woolworths did in Maleny but not so many know about what happened in Lane Cove in Sydney. Woolworths bought a small privately owned supermarket called Clancy’s in the middle of Lane Cove shopping centre. It wasn’t big enough for them though and they put in a DA to use Council land and redevelop a Council carpark so they could get more space. For eight years (1998-2005) they fought for this, trying to change public opinion with glossy brochures on their proposal in letter boxes, with expensive displays, Woolworths public relations people at the displays for weeks on end to sway people, and with planning reports saying the area needed more shopping floor-space per resident. The DA was knocked back. They changed it and put in a redevelopment of a council building and it was knocked back again. They changed it a second time and got it through, with the help of a councillor who owned and edited the local paper and had property near the development.People didn’t object to a Woolworths in Lane Cove, they objected to the scale of the development in the middle of the village centre, the loss of the character of the place, the loss of community land. One of the councillors who opposed the development said that Woolworths won simply because they had more money to throw at it than the Council had to present an alternative view.The campaign to stop the development managed to get lots of conditions put on the DA but it was still a big loss. We hadn’t expected Woolworths would be so tenacious, particularly when it came to getting Council land.Victor von der HeydeMain Arm (and Lane Cove & Brisbane).