A key task over the past few months has been working out a scope of works for a builder to quote and prepare for the construction phase. This has been a very helpful step in the process because builders are best positioned to identify where the expensive bits are. And for us, it’s led to considering a change to the parking lot layout. Here’s the thought process…

  1. Our plan was to maximise the rear car park (lower left hand corner of the design) with as many spots as we could fit, including a third disabled spot.

  2. This would mean three things;

    1. Re-leveling the existing rear car park

    2. Widening the road that leads to the rear car park,

    3. Building a retaining wall to support the new wider access road, and

    4. Dealing with the added stormwater requirements of all these elements.

In talking to builders, it’s been helpful to see that these are all rather expensive activities, whereas it is possible to simply enlarge the existing car park (between the church and the house) to get the car parks we need, while not spending nearly as much money.

So, we’ve started to get that drawn up and we’ll be looking to make a change to the DA submission to reflect this new plan. There’s still some stormwater plans that will need to be accounted for, so we’re still working away at it.

One of the other benefits of this solution is that it opens that rear area to become a safe play area for children away from cars.

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