Flood concerns for Rochester township have been identified as the major reason for the town having the slowest moving residential growth rate in the Campaspe Shire.
The shire’s Residential Land Review draft document, delivered at the September meeting of Campaspe council, described the Rochester Urban Floodway Zone as “one of the most restrictive zones in the state and limited new development”.
Campaspe Shire’s population growth is forecast to grow by 10 per cent in the next 14 years requiring homes for an additional 4000 people.
The growing population will require an additional 2300 new houses to be provided through infill and greenfield development across all residential zones.
Rochester’s location is described in the document as “having potential’’, due to its proximity to other service centres and larger towns; notably Echuca and Bendigo.
A high-level assessment of Rochester shows there is an estimated 350 lots identified for potential future residential development.
Most of this land is on the western edge of the town, however, much of the existing undeveloped land closer to the centre of town is in Land Subject to Inundation Overlay or Floodway Overlay, which may prohibit or impact on the ability for housing development.
Constraints to residential land supply and development in Rochester, due to the history of flooding, means that any new development could only occur to the west and outer eastern range of the town.
The draft residential document explained that the town only accounted for five per cent of residential dwelling approvals in the last five years — which equated to nine lots a year.
Restrictions caused by the flood overlay has made residential development in Rochester a nightmare for developers.
Council released a draft Residential Land Review last week, as part of the first step in reviewing current and future residential land across the shire.
The document has a focus on earmarking appropriate land for future residential purposes.
Existing subdivisions west of Queen St that consist of large residential lots and land to west of Hotham St are two areas identified in the document for future development.
Of the existing 57 rural residential lots in Rochester only eight are vacant.
There are only eight vacant low-density residential zone lots, representing an area of about 24ha.
The 45 lots that could be developed on this and expected by the draft document to be sufficient to meet medium-to-long-term demand, given historic interest in residential development in the town.