GCC met with the LDA on 23 March to canvas potential sites within the Gungahlin town centre for the Canberra Muslim Community to build a northside mosque and community centre. This follows on from the CMC’s withdrawal of interest in land for their mosque in Nicholls, which had resulted in significant concerns from Nicholls residents.

President Alan Kerlin expressed concern with the block proposed by the LDA, being to the south of Valley Avenue opposite Hinder Street, which is opposite the proposed club site. These concerns are:

• According to the draft town centre master plan, this site is to be part of the highest density area of the town centre, framing the commercial and business core areas. According to modelling done as part of the master planning, this site could developed to its highest and best use could be several stories of quality residential and commercial development. Therefore the mosque would be a substantial under-utilisation of the land. GCC has been solid in opposing such under-use of town centre land so must maintain this stance irrespective of our ongoing support for the mosque proposal.
• The low-rise mosque development would present context problems for future high density development proposals for surrounding lands, thus spreading the under-use impacts beyond the mosque site itself.

The LDA agreed to check the 3D renderings and flythrough of the potential development of the town centre developed for ACTPLA, so that they can fully appreciate the problems that could be caused by the mosque on this site.

GCC instead questioned the premise used by the LDA of what zones a "place of worship" is allowable. An examination of the Territory Plan indicated there may more options than they thought.
Other locations the LDA agreed to consider were:

• the land immediately south of Big W
• Valley Ave land adjacent to the already approvedi Salvos and Uniting Church sites just east of the childcare centre (as Christian and Muslim churches have different peak periods, this would present some shared parking advantages)
• corner of Gozzard Street and Anthony Rolfe Avenue diagonally opposite the police station
• adjacent to the community health clinic to be located behind Aldi (depending on whether the clinic is to use the entire site).

We agreed that the influx of people into the town centre on Fridays (the peak Muslim day of worship) would be welcomed by struggling Gungahlin businesses, and location at a key public transport hub would address a key shortcoming of the land previously offers by the LDA in Nicholls.
However, the LDA also agreed to consider possible sites along Flemington Road where land is already zoned for community use, and is also on the main public transport route.

On the issue of the mosque, GCC is on the record as being critical of the LDA’s handling of the CMC’s possible development at Nicholls. We have publicly questioned why the LDA handled the Islamic church proposal differently from the direct land sales to two Christian churches in Gungahlin in recent times, where no public consultation was done at all. The LDA has now advised us that the ACT Government changed its policy to now requiring public consultation on all direct land sale proposals. The sale to CMC was just the first to be affected by this policy change. This was the first GCC knew of this policy, despite having raised our concerns about their handling of the process with several senior LDA staff over several months.