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Southbank Residents Group

Southbank Residents Group

Firstly I would like to thank all the residents who attended the members’ meeting. The feedback indicated it was a very constructive and beneficial event with a lot of great discussion.

A special thank you to Natalie from Boyd Community Hub for introducing the centre and giving us a tour of its facilities and history.

I have recently attended two City of Melbourne (CoM) forums chaired by Cr Cathy Oke – The Future of Walking in Melbourne, community discussion for the Melbourne Walking Plan and also the Central City Freight Forum, a discussion on the challenges for the last kilometre of delivery for freight in a quickly evolving Melbourne City. Both of these events had great speakers and we, the participants, provided lots of discussion and mooting of ideas.

I would like to thank Cr Oke for her efforts with these forums and the invitation to attend. I feel a lot was achieved and considered for their plans.

As reported on page 1, the controversial 319-metre, Australia 108 development at 70 Southbank Blvd (cnr City Rd) has now been approved with completion sometime in 2019.

This is going to add in excess of 1000 apartments to the density of Southbank. I am seriously concerned with how the already congested City Rd and Southbank Blvd will be managed by VicRoads to avoid further congestion.

The City Rd redevelopment master plan is due for release soon. I will be reading with interest to see how much collaboration there has been between CoM and VicRoads.

Finally, you may have read in the Herald Sun recently that the City of Melbourne is planning to spend $150,000 on a “Peoples Panel” to provide insight and ideas to council for future planning, amongst other things.

There will apparently be 43 panel positions allocated to residents, business owners and students and will be selected by a random draw across the community. I don’t know about you, but I would have thought a representative from the various resident and business community organisations across the CoM would/should have been assured a panel position.

Who better to inform council about what the community wants other than those people who have been elected to represent them – often passionate community members, not some random name drawn from a ballot! I am challenging council on the initiatives behind this panel structure.

What do you think? Join the conversation on the Southbank Residents Group’s
Facebook post.

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