Community Forum’s large attendance learns little

By Sean Car

There is no current plan for Southbank and any former plans are largely redundant. Those were the key takeaway lessons from the Southbank Community Forum on March 23, which was well attended but light on detail.

Hosted by the Southbank Residents’ Association (SRA) and touted as the biggest event in its history, more than 150 locals gathered at Metropolis Southgate to hear from senior City of Melbourne officers and planning experts.

But much of the audience had already departed by the end of the three-hour forum having heard mostly from moderating SRA president Tony Penna, who spent much of the night occupying the microphone.

While the volunteer-run SRA is to be credited for organising what was overall a successful event, its format sadly failed to capture the full value of the assembled expert panellists and senior ranks of the council.

This also wasn’t helped by the council, which was understood to have rejected a Q&A format in the lead-up to the event and its officers instead used much of their time on the night to explain their individual roles and how the council works.

However, with the council’s deputy CEO Alison Leighton and head of capital works Roger Teale only being appointed to their roles during the past six months, the forum did prove useful in bringing the council up to speed on many local issues.

And it did serve its fundamental purpose in putting the new council on notice that an engaged Southbank community was watching closely in anticipation of much-improved dialogue and results during the next four years.

Beginning with a 30-minute launch of the SRA’s 20-year history book, Lord Mayor Sally Capp joined the book’s author Lynne Lumsden and Mr Penna on stage to thank Lynne and the Southbank community for a “wonderful piece of local literature”.

“It is a comprehensive piece of work,” the Lord Mayor said. “The dedication of Lynne in collecting all of the stories, resources and records from many of you who are here tonight … I commend and acknowledge you for your efforts in completing that work.”

“This is a testament to community leadership in action and here’s to the next volume!”

And so began the forum, which was largely initiated by the SRA off the back of a string of contentious City of Melbourne capital works and planning projects, including Southbank Boulevard, the City Road Master Plan and the sale of land at Boyd Park.

But the theme of the event – Southbank: where to from here? – was based on the 2010 Southbank Structure Plan, which is the largely forgotten 30-year council vision for which development of postcode 3006 was meant to be guided by.

In assembling expert planners Prof Michael Buxton from RMIT University and former City of Melbourne planner, and one of the visionaries behind the Structure Plan and City Road Master Plan Leanne Hodyl, locals were told a lot of what was already known.

That is, Southbank couldn’t look more different to its previous plans today if it tried.

Professor Buxton, who worked on the original plans for Southbank back in 1986, said that European style low- to mid-rise development had been earmarked, only for high-rise buildings with “dead street frontages” to take their place.

“The local streets have no amenity and are dominated by dead building frontages that have only been designed with through traffic in mind,” he said.

“Southbank is creating streets that are dark, windy, unwelcoming and unattractive and people from Southbank have to go elsewhere to enjoy life.”

“I don’t want to dwell on the past but look at lessons from the past for the future. If we don’t learn from what has worked and what hasn’t worked then I think Southbank is going to deteriorate from a kind of ideal that it should be and so much has already been lost from the original vision.”

“Looking back at the 2010 plan, I was amazed at just how much land there was still to be developed in the period between 2007 and 2010. I worked on the original plan for Southbank in 1986 would you believe it and the whole site was proposed to be redeveloped into three- to six-storey European style development. That was the plan.”

“I think the challenge now is to drag out as many of the lessons from that 2010 plan to guide the future and ensure that whatever is left to develop in Southbank is developed in accordance with those principles.”

Professor Buxton finished his address by challenging the council to advocate to the state government to change the planning rules for the central city or risk more of the same for Southbank.

But in providing somewhat of an alternative perspective to Professor Buxton, Leanne Hodyl said that changing planning laws took “a bloody long time” and that the city hadn’t yet fully experienced the fruits of the current state government’s C270 planning scheme amendments from 2016.

The former Churchill Fellow, whose 2014 research focused largely on how to do high-rise buildings well, said that while she was a believer that doing them well was possible, it was incredibly challenging in reality.

And with reference to the key Southbank visions she contributed to, including the Southbank Structure Plan and heavily-delayed City Road Master Plan, she gave the audience a similar assessment.

“It’s a hell of a lot easier to write these plans then deliver them,” she said.

“I do think the structure plan was a really strong piece of work but it did treat Southbank as a technical design problem. What it didn’t treat Southbank as was a complex problem that many, many, many organisations are involved in delivering.”

“The Kings Way undercroft is fantastic example where you’ve got Crown Casino, the police, the water authority – it’s really complex and I can put my hand on my heart and say the structure plan didn’t address that scale of complexity.”

“I think decking CityLink would be amazing but we talked about doing the same at Fed Square for 30 years before it happened, which is why it’s in the structure plan as a business case – not deck it – do a business case. See whether it’s possible.”

“I do think it would be great if the structure plan was revisited but it would be essential that more stakeholders were involved.”

Ms Hodyl did, however, duly remind the audience of the state government’s transformation of Southbank’s Arts Precinct and she said some works were already creeping deeper into Southbank Village that focused on “re-wilding” and creating better connections to the river.

“I’ve got friends who are working on the design of the Sturt St spine and there is a real focus there on re-wilding and that will be such an amazing future vision for Southbank is how to re-wild and get some of that green biodiversity back,” she said.

“The quality of the public realm in Southbank is challenging. Fifty per cent of Southbank is streets and that hasn’t changed so that is still a really key opportunity to get more great public spaces. Keep advocating for your streets to be really fantastic.”

As a means of setting the scene for discussion, Tony Penna extracted all the key detail from the Southbank Structure Plan and relayed it to the audience in a long address which included a summary of many key local issues affecting locals.

Public open space continues to be central on the Southbank community’s agenda. And with the loss of space and delays and cost blowouts on many projects, the remaining locals still in the room were keen to hear from the council’s officers about all means of rectification.

But together with a newly-elected team of councillors, the new team of Alison Leighton, Roger Teale and the council’s head of major capital works and infrastructure Jonathan Kamouris were really only able to provide updates on current initiatives. These notably included Southbank Boulevard, as well as the delayed Southbank Promenade upgrades.

Lord Mayor Sally Capp and Deputy Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece were also each given the opportunity to address locals at the end of the night.

What ultimately transpired from the discussion was a commitment from the council to review the Southbank Structure Plan as part of an overall audit of all council strategies and policies.

“Doing that audit of everything that has been done is really important,” the Lord Mayor said. “We have to do a realistic review of the structure plan to give a report back on really is feasible.”

“I think that incapsulates one of the big issues coming out of tonight is that we have to have real, honest conversations with the residents of Southbank and we have to work together and identify what those projects are and be realistic about timeframes, resources and scope for those works.”

“We’ve got some stark examples of what not to do, so we need to move into a completely different paradigm.”

In summarising the outcomes from the night, one local resident said the event left them “wondering and concerned”.

“The 2010 plan is clearly not a living document, has not been delivered on, has never been updated, and is for all practical purposes obsolete, which essentially means we currently don’t have a plan for Southbank?!”

“I’m left wondering and concerned that if the council does not follow the strategic plan, what does it do to instead ensure infrastructure spend is appropriately targeted to ensure we have an attractive precinct for residents and visitors?”

While Mr Penna acknowledged the forum could have been done better, he said there were plenty of lessons to take out of the event for both the SRA and, more importantly, the City of Melbourne.

“Next time around, I will make a serious effort to be more succinct and won’t let council squirm away without answering our questions – I guess you could say, lesson learnt,” he said.

“It is disappointing that 11 years has passed since the structure plan was released and only now we learn it is not a live document. This event was certainly an eye-opener for the Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor as it highlighted the lack of planning council has with regard to Southbank.”

Vale Joe Bagnara

The Southbank community sadly learned last month that long-serving SRA president Silvio (Joe) Bagnara had passed away on February 20 at the age of 88.

The long-time Coventry St resident was involved with the SRA since its establishment in 1998 and served as the group’s president for several years up until 2012.

In 2017, he was awarded with life membership by the SRA for his contributions to the Southbank community spanning many years.

Southbank News pays its respects to Joe, his wife Margaret and his family and thanks Joe for his many years of service to the Southbank community and this newspaper •