DA - APPROVED (conditional)

WOOOOOOO! The DA for the new place has FINALLY been determined by the ACT Dept of Planning. My estimate is that it took about 15 1/2 weeks from their lodgement date to the determination, which is far above and beyond the statutory limit of 9 weeks. I'd like to say something nasty here about ACT Planning, but I guess I don't really know the full details. After all, the DA wasn't lodged by me, and I don't know what else needed to be amended or re-negotiated in the application.

The result that I can see on the ACT Planning website says "approved conditional". I don't really know what the "conditional" part of that means, but I assume it has something to do with the hold up. Hopefully it won't involve much deviation from the plans that were part of our contract...

We've had no word from our real estate agent yet, but hopefully we should hear from them soon. And more importantly, see some movement on the site!

I'm very excited about it, although its only a very early milestone still. From previous estimates of the build time provided by the builder/agent, it should take about another 7 months to build. That puts the finishing date at mid June next year (I'm assuming it will be more like the end of June/start of July).

When I think about it like that, it still seems like such a long, long way away. I'm going to have to learn to enjoy the process of the build.

One other thing that I've been thinking about on the house is the costs of cabling - do the benefits of fixed cables outweigh the costs and hassle of installation? My preference is for a wired home network, rather than a wireless one, but this is meeting some resistance from Dana. I shall have to do some sort of cost/benefit analysis and present her with a business case or something.

Happy days. It makes me think of this song:


PS: Yay!

Delays and more delays

This site is looking decidedly neglected. The reason for the neglect is that the ACT Department of Planning (and whatever else it is that they do) has still not approved the development application. We have confirmation from our real estate agent that this is the hold up and that it should be resolved "soon".

In the meantime, I think I'm going to change the focus a little bit and look at some other bits and pieces. The first is to start re-posting some design blogs that I've been enjoying, and also probably some game reviews.

Time to get into it! Firstly, here's some interesting post on desiretoinspire.net on a house by Whiting Architects. The house skirts a very fine line of being a little too severely modernist for my tastes, but some bits of it look supremely livable.




These two pictures are my favourite from the lot. The rest is all a bit white and stark edges, which is nice to look at, but I can't imagine living in.

Tune in next time, when I'll talk about my new PS3 slim!

Development Application update

I checked the ACT Planning site yesterday, and the planning documents are no longer up there. Does this mean the application has been finalised? Maybe. Do I have any way to know for sure? Probably not.

At any rate, I checked the site on the weekend, and there has still not been any progress. It's not even fenced off.

Woe...

Development application update

I did some research on the ACT Planning website this morning, and found out a few interesting things.

The DA for our complex was in fact originally lodged on 8/6/09, but did not clear the initial checks at ACT Planning. It was submitted again on 24/6/09. The ACT Planning website shows final lodgement for the application that's currently on there as 9/7/09. I don't wish to besmirch ACT Planning, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it had taken them the two weeks from 24/6/09 to register all the documents on their system as lodged.

The DA is available for looksee on the ACT Planning website here. They stopped accepting public comments on 5/8/09.

Today is just under 7 weeks from the final lodgement date of the DA. There is actually a statutory limit on how long ACT Planning can take to consider an application - the limit is 6 weeks if no third party provides them with a submission, or 9 weeks if a third party does. This gives us the 6-9 weeks originally quoted by the builder.

It's a bit difficult to tell from the ACT Planning website, but the application is still listed as "active" so I suppose it must still be under consideration. There's no third party submissions posted on the ACT Planning website, but they might be confidential. My hope is that the DA will be approved any day now, worst case scenario, 2 weeks.

I'm a little bit peeved by the delay - we're about a month behind schedule before building has even started - but at least I have a better idea of what's going on now.

I've seen enough Grand Designs to expect this sort of thing, but I was hoping the delays wouldn't start so early!

Progress report: there is nothing to report.

Still no movement on site. Emails we have from the builder (via the agent) indicate that building will commence on approval of the DA (I think that means development application), which the email said would be lodged around 5/6/09. The email estimated 6-9 weeks for approval of the DA.

It's now 28/8/09, 12 weeks later. Maybe there's some sort of progress that I can't see going on somewhere, but if there is, I don't know about it.

I'm going to see if the DA is available for public viewing somewhere. Wish me luck.