Greens Councillor Hillary Morris supported the decision to refuse the application for development of the Avoca Beach Cinema at the Gosford Council meeting on June 9 2015.
Her reasons included that there is a significant hurdle for the applicants to overcome with the use of South End Park as parking for theatre attendees. This area is subject to flooding and whilst there is a Voluntary Planning Agreement in place to the value of some $200k to $500k, it goes nowhere near the $4.8 million required to undertake flood mitigation measure.
Additionally, there is, since March 2015, an Interim Heritage Order which needs to be resolved before any approval of a DA can happen. As proposed, the expanded cinema section of the development has issues regarding view loss to surrounding residents as well as not being sympathetic to the existing heritage theatre. For these reasons, Hillary was unable to support the DA in its current form.