Melbourne sees biggest inner-city rezoning in Australia's history

[tayser]

The Victorian Planning Minister has just announced that amendment VC92 has been approved and has now explicitly included Fisherman's Bend (below), E-Gate (another are to the north of Docklands) and Richmond Station to the east to the planning scheme that have allowed the CBD, Docklands and Southbank to grow how they have been now - the largest inner-city rezoning in Australia's history.

The first area that has now been announced that will get the go ahead sooner than the mooted 25 year timeframe previously announced will be the new suburb of Montague (named after the main st through the area) - in the below pic, Stage 1

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/fi...627-212xk.html

THE first areas identified for CBD-style development at ''Fishermans Bend'' are located in Port Melbourne and South Melbourne industrial areas - not near the General Motors Fishermans Bend facility on the banks of the Yarra River.

A departmental briefing shows the first four areas targeted to accommodate up to 60,000 new residents and 24,000 homes are almost all south of the West Gate Freeway in industrial land running to Williamstown Road.

Planning advice to the department said a development of this size in Port Melbourne would require new community facilities, including ''schools, potentially five primary schools and two secondary'', shops and open space.

Earlier this month Port Phillip Council announced plans for up to 13,000 new homes as part of high density development in the Montague Street area.

Today, we got names of the 4 new Fisherman's Bend suburbs: Montague (stage 1), Wirraway (stage 4 - I think), Sandridge (stage 3 - I think) and Lorimer (stage 2).

Concept from today's HUN paper for Montague:



Montague is in the City of Port Phillip local government area, right nextdoor to City of Melbourne, and they have a brochure out on the structure plan here: http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/MO..._Brochure_.pdf

Split in a more medium-density / Berlin/Vienna/Paris style ("urban small") in the "Southern Neighbourhood" and more akin to what we know in Docklands (podiums like in "urban small" neighbourhood, but with towers setback and rising above them) in the "Northern Neighbourhood" - the boundary is the existing ex-heavy rail now light-rail (tram) #109 tram route.

Not entirely clear what the target is - on one hand the Port Phillip brochure states up to 25k people could be living there, yet the main HUN article today stated 60k people will live in the entire Fishermans bend area (Phase 1, 2, 3 and 4).

anyhow - Port Phillip's numbers (from brochure)

50ha in area
up to 25k people living there
15k working there.

that's density stat of 500 people per hectare assuming the top end of the range.

50 hectares = 0.5 square kilometres / just under 0.2 square miles..... aka mega density.

Before Phases 2, 3 and 4 start, we're going to need a cross-rail-like line linking the west, Fisherman's Bend and Docklands/CBD as the tram lines as they are right now will not cope with 60k-100k people eventually.

[tayser]

To put a things into perspective

the original image is from the Growing Australia's Cities report and only shows City of Melbourne's land - Fisherman's is mostly in City of Port Phillip, Richmond Station is mostly in City of Yarra - E-Gate is the only key development area that is entirely in City of Melbourne, I've edited it to depict the areas included in this mass-planning scheme change.

South Kensington and Arden are the only two areas there's not been much info publicised.



The only info we've seen is a concept floating about of South Kensington - which is currently the wholesale food markets area which are moving further out on the fringe of the city closer to the producers and if the following actually comes to fruition Melbourne's main skyline is likely to stretch in a 6-7 km crescent from the west in Footscray to St. Kilda in the south.

Footscray in bottom left corner, looking east / north east

[mello]

Melbourne thinking big once again. What has been the reception to this. Looks like a lot of people in the comments section are complaining that there is not a big investment in new transit included in this plan. What is your commentary on this Tays?

[tayser]

Newspaper comment sections arent usually the best way to gauge a proper reaction as they're usually just a whingefest, but some of the PT related comments are somewhat relevant.

I covered it off in my blog

[mello]

I can't believe that this isn't getting any comments. Are US forumers jealous that little Melbourne thinks bigger than LA, thinks bigger than probably any other North American city besides Toronto and NYC? This is amazing for a metro area of 4.5 million.

In a thread of thinking big per capita Melbourne is tops! I will visit one day soon and I expect a great tour Tays

[seaskyfan]

Quite a proposal. I couldn't quite get a sense of what's in the redevelopment area currently - could you describe what's there now (low density residential, etc.)?

[tayser]

Originally Posted by seaskyfan

Quite a proposal. I couldn't quite get a sense of what's in the redevelopment area currently - could you describe what's there now (low density residential, etc.)?

clicky clicky for map

Fish Bend: Navy blue
E-gate: Red
Richmond Station (my guestimate of the scope of area given past development trends): lime
Melbourne Metro tunnel: thin purple line (project to remove 4 lines from the current loop structure and have the trains run from the North West suburbs to the South East suburbs through the middle of the city)

the other coloured areas are the existing CBD, Docklands, Southbank and St. Kilda Road areas which now fall under the same planning controls.

if you keep the map zoomed at the level I had it in the link, you can see the existing suburb names South Melbourne, Albert Park, North Melbourne, West Melbourne, Cremorne etc.

I set the map / link to sat so you can see what's currently in the three new areas - go to street view in any of them and you'll see, but overall they're industrial / logistic land uses - except for Richmond which is mainly residential.

Fisherman's Bend is loosely regarded as the whole peninsula that "bends" from the mouth of the Yarra River back toward the CBD. All industrial/port - current tenants in the area are Holden (General Motors), Boeing, Toyota, Department of Defence (where they develop and test RAN weaponry and other naval equipment), and a few warehouses in the area are used as film sets. There's also a lot of smaller semi-industrial companies down there.

Fisherman's Bend (all the area north of Williamstown to West Gate FWY, and the section to the east of Citylink and north of West Gate FWY): 95% industrial land. In the map I posted above, the green areas are all of the Fisherman's Bend areas (250ha) that are now going to have similar planning controls as CBD+Southbank+Docklands.

Toyota has a site there which I dont think is used for assembly/production anymore (it's further out west) but their Aus HQ functions are all there - they're probably one of the companies to be targeted to move into the new urban commercial space to be created throughout the area.

E-Gate (area north of Footscray road (opposite northern Docklands) to Arden St) is mainly rail workshops which are slowly being dispersed throughout the metro - it started when they built Fed Square - removed all the rail yards, straightened all the track and decked over - all rail crews are assigned to depots in the suburbs now (which makes perfect sense). Bombardier is out in Dandenong and they have a maintenance facility in E-Gate which will move on. Much of this land is state government owned and leased out so it's an easier task to redevelop.

[seaskyfan]

Thanks for the map - I should have remembered to Google it.

Is there any controversy about the loss of industrially zoned land? That's been an ongoing debate here in Seattle.

[Roadcruiser1]

I really hope that this will allow Melbourne to finally have a skyscraper over 1,000 feet.

[scalziand]

^ I dunno about that. So far I haven't seen any indication that the rezoning increased the height limit beyond what was available in the existing downtown areas.

[tayser]

Originally Posted by scalziand

^ I dunno about that. So far I haven't seen any indication that the rezoning increased the height limit beyond what was available in the existing downtown areas.

The main thing that limits height in Melbourne is overshadowing of the river and the heritage areas of the CBD (mainly Chinatown) and the central core (40m-60m height limits on Swanston St).

300-350m is realistic for E-Gate, northern Spencer St (existing west end of the CBD) and even in parts of Fisherman's bend closer to the river - as its on the southern bank, overshadowing isnt a problem.

[miketoronto]

For former employment lands, it seems a little heavy on the residential?

I think more emphasis is needed on growing workplaces for people to be working in, if this is on prime central area land.

[tayser]

Port Phillip's structure plan for Montague says up to 14-15k people working in the area, if you assume 20 square metres per person thats 300,000 sqm of commercial/retail space in 50 hectares / 0.5 square kilometres. Many of the businesses that are in the area could easily just upgrade as in the Montague area it's mostly light-industrial and small scale offices. The other phases are where most of the larger industrial sites are located and if the same type of commercial:residential population ratio (1:2) is applied across all of Fisherman's Bend that's 70-75k people working in 250 hectares.

Not the same level as people working in the CBD obviously, but to say there's not much emphasis on people working there is false.