A BIG loophole that gives developers freebies in Vincent will be closed. A rash of recent developments has been able to stack an extra storey on top of their projects by calling it a “loft”. In recent cases like the Pacific Motel development and the Brewer Street six-storey units, a divided development assessment panel has…

BAYSWATER city council has double-faulted on its decision to slash the number of courts at Maylands Tennis Club. Two months ago the council decided to reduce courts from 17 to 11, after a council review revealed the club only had 78 members and was costing ratepayers around $1400 per member. The council is responsible for…

NEARLY 30 Mount Hawthorn locals fronted Vincent council meeting this week to oppose a set of units in their quiet residential street. Lynton Street residents don’t want the four dwellings built on the block which at the moment holds just one house which will be demolished. The owner’s hired gun developer Tuscom says the development…

THE WA government’s housing density rollout continued to be felt acutely through Vincent this week: Five of the six planning items in front of the council were applications to demolish single homes and erect units or mixed projects. Real estate agents are embracing the gold rush in their advertising. On the corner of Vincent and…

THE Mt Lawley subway is to be beautified after two years of bureaucratic wrangling. In June 2012 Bayswater city council accepted a state graffiti grant of $15,000 from WA Police and committed $5000 towards an urban art facelift of the underpass. But red tape stymied the project and it fell into a bureaucratic limbo: situated…

AFGHAN interpreters who’d helped Australian troops fight the Taliban are working minimum wage jobs in rural WA. For their own safety some 800 Afghanis who’d aided the Allies were relocated here after Australia’s withdrawal last year. Around 30 ended up in WA and are being helped to build a new life by the Multicultural Services…

Up to the artists I AM writing to correct a statement attributed to me (“Jarrah bridges old and new,” Voice, June 7, 2014). The article states I’d said, “we surveyed the community on what they would like to see in the artwork and then conveyed that to the artists. This is not correct. Creative Maylands…

ALFRESCO red tape is being slashed in Vincent and—gasp!—buskers are being allowed to play without a permit. The council’s new “place managers” David Doy and Di Shaw are desperate to scale back the bureaucracy that holds back strips like Oxford, Angove and Beaufort Streets. Mr Doy says old rules on alfresco are too restrictive, such…

STIRLING city council’s plan to ban multiple dwellings on suburban blocks coded below R60 could impact house prices, says REIWA president David Airey. The council is consulting the public about amending its town planning scheme to reverse a recent decision by the WA government to allow more multiple dwellings on land coded below R60. “If…

DAILY PLANET cafe has closed after a bumpy couple of years. The place had picked up its game big time after copping a hammering in the early days with brutal reviews on sites like Urban Spoon. Weeks after opening the placed close temporarily with an apology on the door, promising to reopen soon with better…