Back to the Future … 2021

Hello, dear readers. I hope you have all had a happy, peaceful and healthy transition into 2021.

The Montague Precinct is springing back into life, with almost 2019 numbers of pedestrians and cars on the road, but with an enormous amount more electric scooters and skateboarders cutting through our precinct to the city and back again.

It makes for a very interesting streetscape, and a few near misses. As a note from all of us residents, please make sure you look before you cross the road, particularly up from your phones!

It was a joy to see all the little ones returning for the third year of South Melbourne Primary School, and particularly for those that started at the day care and have graduated to school.

The developments around the education precinct at the top of Buckhurst St, including the development of Montague Square, are moving on apace and are planned to be completed this year.

It will be interesting to see if Kirrip Park is used outside of school hours. It was, until the end of last year, being used a lot on the weekends for individuals and families with dogs and those doing workouts during the 2020 lockdown.

However, as without notice to the local community the park was made leash-only, all those using it on weekends with their dogs have moved away, disrupting what was becoming a fun community activity.

With the influx of hundreds of new residents moving into the abovementioned developments, inevitably with dogs, it will be interesting to see how they respond to the restrictions on the only park around them.

As the park is not used by the school after hours, or on weekends, we just don’t understand why the restrictions are not lifted during those times to support and encourage community activities.

The developments along Normanby Rd and environs are progressing apace and our landscape and streetscape is changing almost daily.

We look forward to these completed before the next tranche of developments start, to give us a break from all the noise and disruption.

The Montague Community Alliance hopes to be able to hold a community event sometime this year, COVID-19 permitting.

An event where we can hear from not just our elected representatives, but the council and Fishermans Bend Taskforce officers on the plans for the Montague Precinct.

It would also be an interesting initiative to consider how all these new apartments/offices are being marketed.

It is clear that those who leased or bought prior to 2018, in Gravity Tower on Montague St and Nightfall on Gladstone St, or those who bought or leased offices in Gladstone, Buckhurst and Thistlethwaite streets, were not told about the developments.

For example, the old Carlin’s site on Buckhurst St and Fifteen85 on Gladstone St were only demolished at the end of 2018.

And we are not holding our breath about a local community office in Montague to answer local residents and businesses queries about the development, street closures, etc.

But we do hope for all those things we had negotiated in 2019 will come to pass in 2021.

Yes – we are hoping to go back to the future •