An opportunity for a park?

The announcement last week that Beulah International has put the project manager of its STH BNK project at the old BMW site on the City Rd into administration was a massive surprise. 

This project would have transformed City Rd and created a central shopping precinct for Southbank. Its proposal was certainly ambitious and with the post-COVID supply chain cost increases maybe we should have expected this; after all construction companies have been falling like dominoes post COVID. 

I guess the big question now is, what’s next? I believe the land with its development approval is on the market to be sold, so we may see another attempt at developing the site, however I would suspect not as spectacular. In any case, it is likely to be many more years before any further progress.

But maybe there is an opportunity here? 

The City of Melbourne has been challenged with finding a suitable site for green open space around our neighbourhood. Could this be that site? 

Considering the likely hundreds of millions the proposed City Link decking was expected to cost, which the council had outlined in the 2010 Southbank Structure Plan (therefore indicating there was always an expectation for such a significant cost of some sort) before recently removing this from the plan (without any community consultation), then owing to this site’s size and location it would be ideal. It even has access to sunlight! 

I suspect the purchase of the land and its development would still be significantly cheaper than what any City Link decking was going to cost.

While this might be a sound, and obvious, solution to Southbank’s open space dilemma, I suspect the council will have no appetite to even consider it owing to cost sadly.

In the meantime, there is a fenced-off empty block of land at 25-35 Power St. This has been empty for around 10 years. 

I was of the understanding the council expected developers of undeveloped sites to temporarily transform them into open space. I am not sure why this site has not been subject to such conditions. 

Southbank Residents’ Association (SRA) believes this would also be an ideal site for temporary green open space. Our SRA committee has decided to actively pursue this with the council so watch this space.

SRA will be holding its AGM soon. If you are passionate about your community and would love to assist with our advocacy, then please reach out as we would love to hear from you. We can be reached at [email protected] •