Art, Community Fee Hikes Stymie Units in Perth’s Leafy Mosman Park

A town administration’s eagerness to treble a developer’s public art and community benefit contribution has cast a cloud over his $20-million apartment project in Perth’s exclusive western suburbs. Restaurateur-cum-developer Brett Carboni has applied for a two-year extension to his four-year approval of an eight-storey apartment building at Mosman Park after the approval expires on May 5 next year. Carboni plans to build the apartments on the site of his Japanese restaurant, Tsunami, at 16 Glyde Street in the riverside and seaside suburb 14km south-west of the CBD. “We’ve been trying to make [the project] go,” he told The Urban Developer . “We’ve had a quantity surveyor report done, I’ve got experts on it but the architects tell me that they can't get a fixed price contract from a builder. “I’ve actually just come out of a cost-plus contract [on another project] with a builder and it did not go very well.” When the project was approved on May 5 in 2023, Carboni, a long-term Mosman Park resident, was not compelled, but volunteered, to make a $172,465 community benefit contribution that included public realm upgrades and $20,000 for public art. The package exceeded the Town of Mosman Park’s requirements at the time. But in the intervening period the single-suburb municipality introduced two policies respectively requiring developer contributions for public art and community benefit. ▲ Brett Carbone said a hike in public art and community benefit fees would make his Mosman Park project unviable. In a report to Western Australia’s metro inner development assessment panel, the town’s director of community place and planning Ross Minett acknowledged the policy did not address situations where a development had already been approved with an included public art contribution. But, Minett said, when assessing an application to extend the commencement period of a project, the main consideration was whether the proposal would still be granted approval if it were submitted today. Minett recommended that the assessment panel refuse Carboni’s requested approval extension when the decision-making body meets on July 23. This was largely because Carboni had declined to provide a report outlining additional contributions and had told the town he would not do so. Development costs double Since the project was approved, its development cost has doubled from $10 million to $20 million, even though the only thing Carboni has sought to change is the start date. “The [public art] policy generally requires a contribution equivalent to 1 per cent of the construction cost, which would [now] equate to a $200,000 investment in public art for this project,” Minett said. “The increase in construction value represents a material change in the project’s economic scale and its subsequent impact on the local environment. “Under the current framework, the revised community benefit contribution required ... is calculated at $405,714.29.” Combined, the public art and community benefit levies sought by Minett total $605,714.29, 3.5 times more than the originally endorsed contribution. ▲ A rendering of the Mosman Park project’s roof garden. Carboni said the goalposts had shifted and he had concerns about procedural fairness. He said the risk of paying the extra $600,000-plus would be “unacceptably high”. “We’re not changing anything, so why do we have to pay more?,” he said. “We’ve already been approved. “All we’re doing is waiting to find a builder.” Carboni said he was “quietly confident” the assessment panel would on July 23 overturn Minett’s recommendation of refusal. If the panel does vote in favour of the restaurauter—who recently developed a $6-million car wash at Wanneroo in Perth’s outer north—he intends to develop eight little restaurants on the ground floor of the Mosman Park project. “Some of the guys working for me; we’ve got a teppanyaki bar at the restaurant, so that would become a standalone teppanyaki bar,” he said of one of the planned eateries. “I’ll probably hang up my boots because I’ve been there for 28 years.” Among the billionaires and business royalty to have owned homes in Mosman Park are Andrew and Nicola Forrest , the late Lang Hancock, Janet Holmes à Court, developer Nigel Satterley and WA’s ‘Spud King’ Tony Galati .

Apartments
Chris Thomson
Mon 20 Jul 26

Art, Community Fee Hikes Stymie Units in Perth’s Leafy Mosman Park

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