One of the
wonderful things about our City of Melbourne is the organisation’s transparency
and the ability to often find the background to events. The online audio of the
last Future Melbourne Committee meeting on 15th May has given
insight into Councillors response to The Heritage Victoria decision to refuse
aspects of renewal. It makes for interesting listening.
Essentially
the city was given a two line decision when Heritage Victoria issued a refusal
to the dismantling of Sheds A-D at QVM prior to building a key underground
facility as part of the QVM Renewal process. The sheds were to be repaired and
replaced but Heritage Victoria were not happy with that proposal.
The Council
fully expected that if Heritage Victoria had problems with the proposal, they
would seek discussion with the City, but that didn’t happen. A two line
statement was all they got. The City had the option of appealing the decision
but they decided not to, and it would seem that they had two reasons. Firstly,
when the Heritage Victoria 30 page explanation finally came out it was apparent
that there were a number of aspects of the report that Heritage and the City
would be able to reach agreement on. Secondly, an appeal would be time-consuming
and expensive.
As
Councillors debated what action they should take, it was clear that many still
had strong adherence to the original business case which pushed for underground
location of facilities and vehicles so as to maximise the above-ground floor
space – almost doubling it.
Councillors
pointed out that the 2 alternatives put forward (putting a carpark over the
burial site that is the current car park, or exhuming the bodies and
transferring them) were both completely impractical. Clearly in their view the
current car park is best optioned as park land. Interestingly, it was suggested that
they could simply apply to have the car park under Munro’s increased by 200
spaces if they had to fix the vehicle placement issue.
There was
discussion about the skill-sets that had been developed globally to carefully
manage market deconstruction and replacement (Borough Market and Barcelona).
There was
also discussion about claims of “majority support” be opposing groups at QVM with
neither able to really verify their claim. Clearly there are many different views
in this matter. Then there was speculation about the possible mandate of two
elections for Lord Mayor. We now know that the last two elections for Melbourne
Lord Mayor have been won by supporters of QVM Renewal.
A number of
Councillors felt that an appeal should be launched, and Heritage Victoria taken
to task, but in the end a more pragmatic approach was taken and the City
decided to launch a fresh proposal and re-engage with all the stakeholders.
That proposal will be developed over coming months.
Councillors are
clearly committed to QVM Renewal and largely critical of Heritage Victoria’s
stance. It was agreed that this is a good opportunity to move forward and two
quotes seemed to sum up the City view. “This is a small road block”, and “We
need to better sell a wonderful project.”
The full
audio can be heard on the CoM website.