First published 27 Oct 2026, 1:00am
Australian Surf Life Saving comp at North Kirra Beach – an area where a new court ruling has favoured a protest by neighbours over a council development approval. Picture: Annette Dew
In a stunning win for furious neighbours, a court has wiped out council approval for a towering luxury apartment expansion after a judge slammed the local government for treating its own planning rules as an “arbitrary but dispensable aspiration”.
The stinging rebuke from Planning and Environment Court Judge Nicole Kefford DCJ stripped a developer of council approval to stack five extra storeys onto a development site in a suburb that has one of Australia’s most popular surf beaches.
The development site, bordered by high-rises and foreshore parkland. Image credit: BDA Architecture via Urban Planning Services / City of Gold Coast.
The decision set aside an approval by the Council of the City of Gold Coast, which had cleared the developer to expand the site at 5 and 7 Haig Street in Kirra into a 14-storey, 105-unit tower.
The developer – headed by founder and CEO John Kearney through project entity Immerse Projects 16 Pty Ltd – had already launched the development as the $130 million nine-storey Kaiya Kirra Beach under an existing, approved 65-unit scheme.
The judgment said despite 38 properly made public submissions, all opposing a bigger development, council voted to approve an application to stack five extra levels onto the roof to reach 14 storeys – triggering an appeal by neighbouring Elysee residents Henry Herron, Linda Herron, and David Paterson.
In DA documents lodged with council, the developer had pitched the 14-storey design as an “exciting opportunity” with a “striking facade” featuring “curvilinear balconies, angled blade walls, expansive glazing” that would establish it as a “standout residential development”.
Gold Coast mayor Tom Tate at Kirra Beach in a file image from earlier this year. Picture: Annette Dew
In a scathing written judgment delivered in Brisbane on Friday, Judge Kefford dismantled council’s courtroom defence of the project, exposing errors in its case and calling out the local government for repeatedly rubberstamping high-rises at “complete odds” with statutory density benchmarks.
Judge Kefford expressed sharp reservations about council’s push to treat legislated planning controls as optional suggestions.
“The Council’s submissions seek to justify the density of the proposed development by inviting the Court to treat the categories on the Building density overlay map, and the associated definitions in City Plan, as having no relevance beyond an arbitrary but dispensable aspiration. I have reservations about such a construction,” Judge Kefford ruled.
Addressing council’s track record, Judge Kefford warned the “local area contains numerous recently approved developments that are at complete odds with the density mapped on the Building density overlay map”.
The judgment said the court’s proper approach to planning policy must be one of restraint rather than rubberstamping past aberrations.
The court tore into council’s attempts to defend cramming 317 bedrooms onto the 2,026-square-metre block – a density 7.81 times higher than designated under the RD5 zoning.
Under the Gold Coast City Plan, the site carries a mapped building height limit of 29 metres.
The proposed 14-storey tower at 5–7 Haig Street, Kirra. Judge Kefford has refused to allow the development to go up to 14 storeys. Image credit: BDA Architecture via Urban Planning Services / City of Gold Coast.
The developer and council argued a 50 per cent “height uplift” to 43.5 metres was justified because architectural design mitigated the building’s physical bulk and achieved an “excellent standard of appearance”.
Judge Kefford flatly rejected those claims, delivering a blistering analogy on the tower’s redesign.
“In my view, the recesses, jaggedness and varied horizontal trajectories on the perimeter of the floorplates exacerbate the appearance of bulk,” Judge Kefford said.
“They have a jarring visual effect akin to that experienced when viewing a person wearing ill-fitting clothing made from fabric with a highly patterned and busy print. The variations in the design only serve to accentuate the appearance of bulk.”
The judge found “the proposed development contains so many varied angled and curved projections and recesses, the visual result lacks coherence and harmony”.
The judgment said “the facades present as a continuous, vertical, and imposing rectilinear mass that is unacceptably visually dominant and overbearing on the adjoining properties”.
It noted that on the western boundary near the 14-storey Isla building, the design “will create a ‘canyon-like’ effect for residents using the communal open space,” while also finding it “will visually dominate and overbear the private and communal open spaces of the Elysee development to the north and, to a degree, crowd the street.”
Spectators and locals flock to the North Kirra foreshore, an area long celebrated for its low-key coastal character. Picture: Annette Dew
Dismissing claims that the tower made a positive contribution to the local skyline, Judge Kefford found it “lacks a legible top” and “randomly terminates at an arbitrary height” – producing a “bland contribution made by the adoption of a flat roof profile atop a stack of monotonously uniform floorplates”.
The judge found the developer’s push to cram 317 bedrooms onto the site drove its flawed aesthetic outcome.
“The proposed development involves a design that is crowded with built form, including multiple small balconies on each facade, while exhibiting few architectural treatments directed purely to aesthetic effect,” Judge Kefford found.
“That appears to be a consequence of the density that Immerse Projects 16 Pty Ltd has sought to accommodate within the building and on the subject land. The result is a visually imposing and overbearing building, the impact of which is not materially ameliorated by its design.”
Ordering the refusal of the expansion project, Judge Kefford said: “The noncompliances are occasioned by the design deficiencies of the proposed development and its inappropriate visual amenity impacts. They are serious and deserving of significant weight.”
“The appeal is allowed; the decision of the Respondent to approve the Co-respondent’s development application is set aside; and the Co-respondent’s development application is refused” – meaning the neighbours won their legal fight, the council’s green light for the 14-storey expansion was wiped out, leaving only the developer’s original nine-storey approval in place.
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