Embassy Residences vs Embassy Offices
The Upper Leeson St Area Residents Association was founded over 40 years ago with the aim of preserving the residential nature of the neighbourhood at a time when office use was beginning to dominate our area and houses were being converted to commercial usage. Great efforts were made by the Association to reverse this trend and fortunately met with much success as can be seen by the numbers of families who have moved back into the area in recent years. We welcome embassy residences in our area but are increasingly alarmed by the trend for embassy offices moving into the area at the expense of residential amenities. Embassy offices are offices. They bring with them all the negative connotations of increased traffic, conversion of gardens into parking areas, signage, flagpoles, security kiosks as well as the additional problem of demonstrations and the potential risk of terrorism to our neighbourhood. In addition the privilege of diplomatic immunity enjoyed by embassies can lead to ...