Wollongong City Council has poured cold water on plans for a golf course in Maddens Plains which includes a 100-room hotel and 300 dwellings.
The development, one of the largest ever proposed for the northern Illawarra, was labelled as excessive by the council and it has taken its concerns to the NSW Department of Planning.
The council's concerns include the scale of the development - known as the Illawarra Ridge Golf Course - which includes 100 hotel rooms, 100 serviced apartments and 200 short-stay accommodation villas.
The 55 ha site has no electricity connection and will need significant upgrades to sewerage, water and telecommunications infrastructure to operate.
"This raises the question as to whether this is an appropriate site for the proposed development," the council said in its report.
The council's rejection comes amid growing concern among planning circles that golf course proposals are acting as trojan horses for residential development.
In its report, the council described the golf course as closer to a residential development than a golf course.
"The proportion of the accommodation component of the proposal ... relative to the golfing facilities ... indicates that the dominant use of the site will be for the provision and servicing of accommodation," the council said in its report.
The final say on the proposal will ultimately be made by the NSW Department of Planning and Planning Minister Frank Sartor.
The company behind the proposal, developer Links Living, said it could adequately address all of the council's concerns.
"Links Living's proposal provides all the necessary infrastructure needed for the development, including world's best practice recycling of waste water and on-site sewage treatment," a spokesman said yesterday.
"We believe our project is actually a low-density development and there will be no permanent accommodation provided on the site ... nine-hole courses are the future of golf across the world and we are planning a number of such facilities across Australia."
News of the council's concerns was welcomed by the Northern Illawarra Chamber of Commerce.
President Pauline Lacelles-Smith applauded the decision.
She said the proposal was excessive and inappropriate.
"To create a new urbanised zone in an environmentally rich and diverse section of the Illawarra escarpment, with no services or infrastructure, is totally unwarranted," she said.
The proposal is one of two golf course proposals in the Wollongong area under consideration by the NSW Department of Planning.
Developer Huntley Heritage hopes to convert a 400ha site once occupied by the Huntley coalmine, west of Dapto, into an 18-hole golf course combined with 700 dwellings, 1000sqm of retail space and a funicular railway.
The Huntley proposal was rejected by the NSW Department of Planning in July last year.
The department raised concerns about the "intensity" of residential development.
However, the proposal is being re-examined by the department.
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