The residents in nearby Kyooma St say they haven’t given up the fight over the single entrance and road alignment for the new Baringa Estate development but engineering and earthworks have begun in earnest on the vacant block.

Kyooma St resident Max Ellicott vowed yesterday to keep fighting for a better outcome for nearby homes in the wake of the development go-ahead.

Mr Ellicott says they wanted the developer to redesign the entrance to the estate off Kyooma and dump the proposed T-intersection.

“The centre of the road is nearly on my footpath. We have begged for some compromises but there has been nothing. We have been ignored,” Mr Ellicott said.

“It’s a complete and utter schemozzle, this single entrance issue, but they’re reluctant to concede they’ve been in the wrong spot with their plans.”

Mr Ellicott has argued that the T-intersection formed at the Kyooma and Allawah intersections will be too small to get buses around and that a small roundabout would have been a better option to provide the entrance into the estate just a few metres along.

The Kyooma St row has been going on for over two years and was sparked after an original entrance off Iona St, which had been in plans drawn up years ago when the vacant site was set aside as a potential new school, was ruled out because of underground water pipes crossing that roadway.

The current consortium of developers – mostly local professionals and building industry operators and owners – then changed plans for the entrance to come off Kyooma.

They’d first bought the five-hectare land lot five years ago and an initial plan to have access off Goonoo Goonoo Rd, just near the Calala Ln turnoff, was also thwarted by the roads authority. 

A spokesman for the consultants to the consortium said the first stage of Baringa provided for 27 residential lots to be built there and the earthworks now were putting the first pieces into place for that development.

The spokesman said there had been delays to the construction start because of the constrained nature of the site and the issues they’d had with water pipes, storm-water and road access. 

“There have been some protracted issues including stormwater which is coming off a 38 acreage catchment and all ending up in this area, so we’ve had to provide for a soft flow path and we’ve had to overcome some road and traffic issues too,” he said.

A second stage was planned, but not yet approved or submitted as a development, and would provide for the remaining 60 lots, which are located around the dogleg block sandwiched between the highway- frontage buildings and Allawah St. The earthworks will be finished by Christmas and the first houses are expected to be built from January.

But Mr Ellicott yesterday vowed to fight on for at least some compromise with the next stages.

“It might be a done deal, but I’m not very happy. We’ve been totally ignored and the entrance is now gone,” he said.

“But I haven’t given up the fight. The management of Tamworth Regional Council has not shown due diligence with this.

“I would like to see the t-intersection resolved and I’d like them to do a redesign of it and a rethink on it.

“So I’m going to see someone at least about that.”