After sitting vacant for quite a few years, the new owners of the Frenchman Bay Caravan Park site appointed Harley Dykstra to progress a Development Guide Plan for the redevelopment of the caravan park site as a Holiday Accommodation Retreat. This iconic site overlooks Whalers Beach, a popular beach destination for tourists and locals alike, and is only a short distance from the historic whaling station tourist facility. The Town Planning Scheme requires the adoption of a Development Guide Plan for the site before any development can be commenced.
Harley Dykstra undertook the design work for the Development Guide Plan, which included investigation of design solutions to address various constraints including the following:
- Coastal process setback requirements;
- Protection of Vancouver Springs;
- Fire management setbacks and requirements;
- Servicing and heritage considerations; and
- Visual landscape amenity expectations.
The final Development Guide Plan includes thirty (30) two-storey holiday accommodation units, a caretakers/reception/kiosk and beach café building, new BBQ pavilion, playground, visitor parking and boat parking areas, and foreshore walkways across the site frontage and connecting to the beach.
As the project generated a considerable amount of community interest, Council requested that public community information sessions be conducted. Harley Dykstra arranged two community information walk-through sessions that were well attended by members of the public. These sessions provided an excellent opportunity to interact with the community regarding their concerns and certainly proved to be a very useful process in distilling the key issues that needed to be addressed. The City of Albany Staff were also present at the community information sessions and applauded both the initiative and the manner in which the sessions were conducted.
