The state wants 800 new homes in this Sydney suburb. The council is arguing for more

A council in NSW Premier Chris Minns’ backyard has accused the state government of under-delivering on housing, claiming Labor’s plan for a key part of southern Sydney falls short on new homes and infrastructure compared to its alternative proposal.

The state government’s rezoning proposal could deliver 800 homes in buildings up to 22 storeys high, about 190 jobs, shop spaces, and pedestrian links next to a train station at Beverly Hills – marking the suburb’s “biggest transformation in decades”.

Georges River Council has a different vision for the suburb – but it wants more homes, not fewer.

The council says its masterplan for 1345 homes spread over a larger area allows for gradual height transitions from 12-storey buildings in the centre to four storeys on residential fringes.

It is a marked departure from approaches other Sydney councils have taken. For example, Woollahra and Mosman councils’ alternative proposals for fewer homes have become a flashpoint in Sydney’s housing supply and affordability debate.

Independent Georges River mayor Elise Borg said the state’s proposal for 80-metre-tall buildings next to low-rise housing – 12 metres tall – indicated the government was looking at the site in isolation rather than prioritising a broader vision for the town centre.

Two per cent of homes would be affordable housing dwellings for low-income earners.

“I would really question if this is creating communities where people want to live, and not just houses for people to sleep,” Borg said. “This is a proposal where the main benefit is with the landowners and developers, and not with the community”.

Before he was premier, Minns, as the Kogarah MP, was quoted in the St George and Sutherland Shire Leader discussing a previous iteration of the council’s masterplan. He wanted “an outcome that will revitalise the Beverly Hills shopping precinct but not at the expense of residents and the local amenity.”

While local and state governments agree Beverly Hills has languished, the rift concerns the specifics of renewal, underscoring a citywide pattern of deepening tensions over how Sydney’s growth areas are managed.

Ben Balzer snr, president of community group Revive Beverly Hills United, said it was not financially feasible to build the low- to medium-density blocks the council was proposing.

“Those developments can only be done at a loss,” he said. The state government’s proposed 22-storey buildings were “the only way this is going to financially stack up”.

Not everyone sees it that way. “Feasibility shouldn’t be the community’s problem,” Beverly Hills resident Rebecca Smallwood said.

The three-storey unit on the busiest corridor in southern Sydney Smallwood moved into two years ago was proof there were developers willing to build lower, she said.