Residents of Lodge Street in Balgowlah are fighting a proposal to build a 10-apartment complex on their quiet cul-de-sac, with over 100 objections lodged against the development application as the LMR Housing Policy reshapes Northern Beaches suburbs one street at a time.
The application, DA2025/1885, proposes a multi-dwelling development at 35 Lodge Street and 138 Griffiths Street, and it sits at the sharp end of a broader wave of change rolling across the Northern Beaches since February 2025. In that time, close to 20 development applications totalling almost 200 dwellings have been submitted under the Low to Mid Rise Housing Policy across the nine designated town centres of the Northern Beaches, including Balgowlah.
For residents of Lodge Street, the numbers tell a local story that is anything but abstract.
What the Policy Actually Allows
The LMR Housing Policy, which took effect in February 2025, allows townhouses, terraces and small apartment buildings of up to 9.5 metres in R1 and R2 residential zones within 800 metres of the nine identified town centres. Within 400 metres of those centres, apartment buildings of up to six storeys are permitted in medium-density zones. On the Northern Beaches, the nine designated centres include Balgowlah, Dee Why, Manly, Manly Vale, Mona Vale, Forestville, Frenchs Forest, Forestway Shopping Centre and Warringah Mall, and properties within the relevant walking distance buffers are now eligible for the increased development standards.
The intent is to diversify housing options across the region and increase supply. The practical reality, as Lodge Street residents describe it, is that the policy can apply those same standards to narrow residential streets with limited infrastructure, tight parking and established neighbourhood characters that were never designed to accommodate the scale of development the policy now permits.
A Cul-de-Sac Doing the Maths
For Beth, one of the Lodge Street residents who has spoken out against the proposal, the numbers are straightforward and alarming. A 10-apartment development would add 30 per cent more households to the cul-de-sac alone. The excavation required for the basement car park would displace the equivalent of two Olympic swimming pools worth of sandstone, and removing it would mean approximately 1,000 truck movements on a street that already has cars parked on both sides and serves as a regular cycling route for local school children.
Beyond the construction phase, residents raise concerns about native and other established trees being removed as part of the proposal, and about apartment windows positioned to look directly into neighbouring gardens, fundamentally altering the privacy of homes that have long relied on the street’s modest scale and mature vegetation for that quality of life.
Resident Beres raises a longer-term concern that sits beyond the immediate proposal. The development, she notes, appears targeted at the high end of the market, with many dwellings across the broader LMR applications described in planning documents as luxury. As Lodge Street’s established demographic ages and families with school-age children find themselves reconsidering their futures there, the question of what happens to local school enrolments over time is one nobody has yet answered.
The Knock-On Effects Are Already Showing
The anxiety goes beyond what might be built. Karen, another Lodge Street resident, describes the human cost of the uncertainty already underway: one family has sold their home since the application was lodged, a second property has gone on the market, and a single mother has indicated she may need to leave the street over concerns about the health impact of sustained excavation dust on her and her children.
That pattern has a precedent elsewhere on the Northern Beaches. At 94 and 96 Park Street and 4 Kunari Place in Mona Vale, a similar situation played out when the Land and Environment Court upheld a developer’s appeal and approved 27 apartments, overriding earlier local planning authority recommendations.
For Lodge Street residents watching that outcome, it reinforces the anxiety that local objections and recommendations, however numerous and well-reasoned, may ultimately carry limited weight when developers pursue legal avenues.
The local planning authority did not support the Lodge/Griffiths Street DA in its current form, citing neighbourhood character considerations and the concern that approving it as submitted would set a precedent that, if replicated across similar sites, would produce unacceptable cumulative outcomes. The recommendation was to halve the development to five units. Developers have since appealed that recommendation.
The Affordability Question Nobody Can Sidestep
Running alongside the character and amenity debate is a more uncomfortable question about what the LMR policy is actually delivering for housing need. Of the almost 200 dwellings submitted under LMR applications across the Northern Beaches since February 2025, only two are identified as affordable housing within the planning documents. The rest range from townhouses to boutique apartment blocks, with many described within their own documents as luxury product.
Local representatives have been vocal about the gap between the policy’s stated goal of diversifying housing and the reality of what is being built. They point to public transport as a structural constraint that makes large-scale residential densification on the Northern Beaches particularly problematic: the peninsula has two roads in and out, and neither the road network nor the public transport system has been upgraded to match the scale of additional residents the policy is expected to bring.
The question of how to incentivise genuinely affordable housing in a market where developers can simply redirect capital to less constrained locations is one the Northern Beaches has already seen play out in Frenchs Forest. Four years after the Frenchs Forest 2041 Place Strategy was adopted, the suburb has seen little residential building despite development approval for 239 apartments.
Developers indicated that affordable housing contribution requirements made those projects financially unviable, and investment moved elsewhere. A proposed three per cent affordable housing contribution on new residential development within town centres is currently awaiting approval before it can take effect.
Residents who wish to follow DA2025/1885 at 35 Lodge Street and 138 Griffiths Street, Balgowlah can track it via the Northern Beaches planning portal.
Published 17-April-2026
