The controversial Balmain Tigers Leagues Club redevelopment is ''unacceptable for the site'' and the height of the three towers should be reduced, the planning authority has told the company behind the proposal.
The Herald has learnt that Rozelle Village developments has also been told the project requires a ''significant redesign'' to address the height and density issues as well as traffic, parking and retail impacts and urban design.
The comments are in a letter sent to the company's managing director, Ian Wright, by the director-general of the Department of Planning, Sam Haddad.
But Mr Wright has responded by warning that reducing the height of the project may force it to jettison costly environmentally sensitive design elements. ''If the scale is reduced we're going to have to look at other ways of materialising the cost of the development,'' Mr Wright said yesterday. ''We will seriously consider the amount of environmentally sustainable design initiatives we include''.
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He told the Herald he was not overly concerned as the company knew compromises would have to be made.
''This is how things get through the system,'' he said. ''We've been prepared all along to reconsider aspects of the development based on community feedback''.
A spokesman for the Rozelle Residents Action Group, David Anderson, said Mr Wright's comments were further proof that the developer's plans were an ambit claim and, by complying with the department's request to ''knock a few storeys off'', they would still end up with a far bigger development than originally proposed.
"It was never the intention of the developer to stand or fall on this 32-storey proposal," Mr Anderson said.
"We believe the developer will amend the proposal to around 20 storeys, reduce the car parking by three levels and re-jiggle the retail mix. Under Part 3A, it will be then possible to submit this revised proposal to the Planning Assessment Commission, without further input from the community."
Last year, Rozelle Village's original proposal was rejected by authorities because its two 16-storey towers were too high. Since then the development has almost doubled in size. The proposal stands at one 32-storey tower and two 26-storey towers.
The developers have run a community campaign based on returning the Wests Tigers to their spiritual home, using the former player Ben Elias as one of the public faces of the campaign.
The team's club, the Balmain Leagues, which sold its property to Mr Wright and Mr Elias in 2009, will comprise about 5 per cent of the completed development as it currently stands.
The decision to request a rethink of the development signals the department's unwillingness to approve the current scale.
