Press - September 2011 to December 2011
POST Newspapers – 31 December 2011
Mystery surrounds The Cliffe
By ANDREA TCHACOS
The for sale sign which stood outside The Cliffe in Peppermint Grove has disappeared along with its listing on selling agent Shellabears website.
Neither the agency nor The Cliffe’s owner Mark Creasy will say why. A source who did not want to be named said the sign had been taken down about two weeks ago.
The property, with the 1894-built house, was formerly listed on the website as “under negotiation” after being put up for sale in August.
A 12-month extension on The Cliffe’s demolition planning approval went through the shire council last week.
Peppermint Grove CEO Anne Banks-McAllister said there was nothing to stop Mr Creasy demolishing The Cliffe. “But I imagine that there would be a conversation with the council before they did that,” she said.
She said last Wednesday that she had not heard anything about any changes to the The Cliffe’s listing.
But she said the council was confident that Mr Creasy intended to preserve The Cliffe.
Mr Creasy proposed, and the council approved, a restrictive covenant for The Cliffe’s protection in August.
The covenant provides that all future owners are not to “demolish, alter or modify all or any part of the residence” without council approval.
The August council agenda says: “It is noted that planning and demolition licence approval have already been renewed several times and it would be difficult for council to reverse previous decisions where there has not been a significant change to the original approval.”
The covenant would justify a future council decision to deny planning approval for demolition, despite the precedent set by previous planning approvals for its demolition.
Mr Creasy’s current approval is not transferable to a new owner.
Responding to the POST’s inquiries, Mr Creasy’s personal assistant said everyone was on holidays and didn’t want to talk about The Cliffe.
Selling agent Chris Shellabear is also on holidays and his assistant, John Lewis, would not comment on anything to do with The Cliffe.
Heritage advocate Brian Waldron said he found their secrecy puzzling.
“I think it’s very disappointing that after so much public interest about The Cliffe’s potential sale, neither the owner nor the agent is willing to discuss it,” he said.
“I thought the owner and the community had recognised its value.
“When the covenant was passed everyone sat back and said this is good news, then we’ve been left in the dark from that point.”
POST Newspapers - 24 December 2011
Mate reveals the true Triffid David
by Andrea Tchacos
The late David McComb, of Perth band The Triffids, was interesting, kind and under-recognised, his good friend and biographer Bleddyn Butcher said.
Bleddyn, a music journalist and photographer, grew up in Perth and, like David, attended Christ Church Grammar School. But he didn’t meet the singer, songwriter and guitarist until the band moved to London, where Bleddyn was living in 1984.
“I reviewed the Triffids’ first gig in England for NME magazine,” Bleddyn said. “We became friends pretty quickly after that.”
Bleddyn, who since has written many articles about the cult Perth band, has released an exhaustively researched biography of David McComb and the Triffids, titled Save What You Can: The Day of the Triffids.
Bleddyn said writing the book was an attempt to give sense to David’s life, in which many local landmarks served as backdrops.
“There’s a lot about Perth and the fight for him to find a way of excelling,” Bleddyn said. The most poignant landmark is the historic The Cliffe property in Peppermint Grove, where David and his four brothers, including band mate Robert, were raised.
“The Cliffe features as a cloistered oasis,” Bleddyn said. “Everyone who knew Dave and Rob when they were children has extremely positive memories of the house. “It started off his point of view. “Even when he came back to Perth through the 80s, he would always live up at The Cliffe.”
Bleddyn said it took him three years to write the book and five to research it.
He said his friendship with and admiration for David, who died in 1999 just before his 37th birthday, had been the driving motivation behind hours of detective work.
“It gave me determination to do it as I didn’t think he was sufficiently recognised,” Bleddyn said. He said David’s emotional troubles could be attributed to his job and his difficulty in building relationships with women.
“He was a beautiful, interesting and very learned person, one of the kindest people you could ever meet,” he said.
“He wrote long, handwritten letters to people.
“If he hadn’t done that, I probably wouldn’t have been able to write the book.”
He also sourced information from David’s notebooks, other members of the band, friends and associates to build up a mosaic of stories, he said. But Bleddyn said David’s lyrics told most about his life. “I think most writing is autobiographical in some way,” he said.
Save What You Can: The Day of The Triffids is available from Treadwater Press, at www.treadwaterpress.com.au.
POST Newspapers – 17 December 2011
New demo order for Cliffe
Peppermint Grove council received another application to demolish Mark Creasy’s historic residence The Cliffe this month, amid negotiations for the property’s sale.
The application, if approved, will last 12 months but cannot be passed on to a new owner if The Cliffe is sold.
Mr Creasy was first issued a demolition licence for The Cliffe in April 2009.Both the planning approval and demolition licence have been renewed on an annual basis since.
In September, the council granted a four-month planning approval to expire in February 2012, the same time as the current demolition licence.
The applicant, planning agency Greg Rowe and Associates, told the council there were several reasons why they had sought a 12-month planning approval this time.
The first was that they would be lodging a demolition licence following the issue of the planning approval, they said. “For administrative simplicity, it is desirable that the planning approval and licence run concurrently in a time sense,” they said.
“Secondly, the landowner is still in discussions with the prospective purchaser of The Cliffe lot and we do not wish to jeopardise or further complicate these negotiations by seeking a further extension to the planning approval in, say, another three to four months, if such an application is required.”
Given previous approvals, they said they felt it was appropriate that a longer approval time frame be sought, to avoid the need to make a further application in a few months.
The statement was published in the December council meeting agenda.
The council’s development services manager David Chidlow said at last week’s agenda forum that the council could renew the planning application for The Cliffe’s demolition for as long it liked.
“If Mark Creasy sells it tomorrow the planning application ceases anyway,” he said.
The Cliffe is listed as “currently under negotiation” on agent Shellabears’ website but agent Chris Shellabear did not respond by press time.
The council will decide whether to grant demolition planning approval at its meeting on Tuesday.
POST Newspapers – 1 October 2011
Cliffe demo order ticked
Peppermint Grove council granted planning approval for demolition of The Cliffe at last week’s meeting despite agreeing to sign a covenant for the property’s protection last month.
The restrictive covenant will only be applied if owner Mark Creasy is able to sell the property.
According to the September council agenda: “There is a risk that if the property is not sold, the owner may proceed with demolition.”
Despite this, councillors voted unanimously for the amended officer recommendation; that the council grant planning approval for demolition of the dwelling and associated outbuildings for a period of four months expiring on February 10, 2012.
It renews an existing planning approval for demolition of the property and its associated outbuildings, which was due to expire in October.
The original approval was granted in October 2008 and has been renewed on a yearly basis since then.
A separate demolition licence was issued by the council in April 2009 and will expire in February next year.
Manager of development services David Chidlow said the purpose of the latest approval was to align expiry dates of the planning approval for demolition and separate demolition licence.
“It doesn’t make any significant change to the actual approval,” Mr Chidlow said.
A spokesperson for The Cliffe’s selling agency, Shellabears, declined to comment on the progress of the property’s sale.
“There’s nothing we can say at this stage,” he said.
POST Newspapers – 17 September 2011
Demo still on cards for Cliffe
By ANDREA TCHACOS and KERRY FAULKNER
Just a fortnight after the council approved a covenant to preserve The Cliffe in Peppermint Grove, it has received a new demolition application.
Owner Mark Creasy’s demolition licence expires next February. A separate planning approval for demolition expires next month.
Ben Carter, of Greg Rowe and Associates, who is overseeing The Cliffe planning, said the new demolition application aimed to bring the demolition licence in line with the planning approval to demolish.
“It’s essentially just to keep all of the options open as they have been in the past,” he said.
Mr Creasy is selling the historic home through expressions of interest with a protective covenant stopping the new owner demolishing it.
He said preservation of The Cliffe was not his major objective.
“I’d be absolutely delighted if I could find someone who’d agree to buy The Cliffe, but the question is, does such a person exist in this universe?” he said.
“If only the people who consider it an icon would step up and buy it.”
Offers to buy the home closed on September 9 but agent Chris Shellabear declined to say if there was a buyer.
“I will not be giving any comment on The Cliffe,” he said.
The Heritage Council of WA said this week it would not lobby to have the home re-entered on WA’s Register of Heritage Places.
The home’s removal from the register in 2008 was instigated by Cottesloe MP and now Premier Colin Barnett.
Mr Barnett was cleared of any wrongdoing by Parliament’s procedures and privileges committee in 2009.
But The Cliffe’s delisting through an Act of Parliament means any bid to relist it cannot be made within five years.
It has two years to run and can only be relisted sooner by an application to the Supreme Court.
But Office of Heritage executive director Graeme Gammie said that was expensive and time consuming and there was no guarantee of success.
“In light of the owner’s and the shire’s intentions with regard to the future of the place it appears there is no mmediate risk to the place,” Mr Gammie said.
The Cliffe preservation supporter Brian Waldron said he had to be guided by the advice of the Heritage Council that the home was not at risk.
“The sale struck me as a perfect opportunity to relist it in the heritage list,” he said.
“But they seem to think it is sufficiently protected by that private arrangement with the council and the owner and the covenant.”
The home was built in 1894 by Neil McNeil to showcase the use of hardwoods. The National Trust classified it in 1984 and included it on the Register of the National Estate in 1992.
It was entered on the WA Register of Heritage Places in 2004 and 2005 after a legal challenge to the initial listing.
Greens MLC Giz Watson said there was no doubt about the home’s heritage value and called for its immediate protection.
She described its delisting in 2008 as unprecedented.
She told Parliament no attempt, successful or otherwise, to remove a building from the heritage list in WA had ever been made.
POST 10 September 2011
Fourteen vie for The Cliffe
The ceilings have collapsed in some rooms, the walls are cracked and the roof is leaking – but buyers are still showing interest in The Cliffe.
Offers for the landmark home in Peppermint Grove were due to close on September 9.
Earlier this week, agent Chris Shellabear said 14 contracts had been sent to prospective buyers.
“People usually lodge their offers on the day before it closes,” Mr Shellabear said.
“I will be discussing the offers with the owner over the weekend, and I would imagine we would have a conclusion by the close of business on Wednesday.”
Mr Shellabear estimated it would cost between $800,000 and $3 million to renovate the weatherboard home.
