A $1.4 BILLION project to build more than 2000 apartments and townhouses at the Moonee Valley racecourse – including four high-rise towers – will put the historical track at the forefront of Melbourne’s battle to provide housing for its booming population.

The proposed residential and commercial development, including four towers more than 20 storeys high, is the centrepiece of a master plan to be released by the Moonee Valley Racing Club within weeks.

The towers will be built in existing car parks, with all parking at the track that holds one of Australia’s premier race meetings – the Cox Plate – to be moved to the centre of the course.

The Moonee Valley club has briefed Planning Minister Matthew Guy and Racing Minister Denis Napthine on its development plans and is working with the Moonee Valley Council on the final touches of the master plan for the 40-hectare site that could house 6000 people.

Mr Guy said that while he was not responsible for approving the master plan, he was ”supportive of inner-city urban renewal on sites such as this”.

Melbourne’s other racecourses – Flemington, with its own dedicated rail line, and Caulfield, next to a major train station – are also keen to unlock their abundant land for residential developments.

The push for racecourse housing will be boosted by figures revealed by The Age last week showing Melbourne is Australia’s fastest-growing capital city – adding more than 1500 people a week. The figures showed that the four fastest-growing municipalities in the country were on Melbourne’s fringe.

It also comes as Latrobe City Council in the Latrobe Valley seeks the rezoning by the state government of 574 hectares of land for residential housing on the edges of its major towns: Traralgon, Morwell, Moe/Newborough and Churchill (see story page 6).

This is in addition to 232 hectares in Latrobe that the government recently rezoned for residential housing. In total, the land-release package would provide enough area to develop an estimated 8055 to 12,090 properties.

The Baillieu government is desperate to identify quality sites in Melbourne for new residential development as the population booms, and racecourses are considered ideal development areas close to public transport and with lots of land now used for car parking.

But the size of the proposed Moonee Valley development has angered some local residents, who are concerned about the impact on services of thousands more people.

The racing club’s chief executive, Michael Browell, said extensive public consultation would be undertaken before the master plan for Moonee Valley, where races were first held in 1883, was finalised.

”We have got a full and comprehensive community consultation process set to begin at this stage in late April, early May,” he said.

He said it would be a ”10 to 14-week community consultation process where the local community will have the opportunity to have a look at what we have proposed, provide feedback and then we will amend our plans accordingly”.

Mr Browell said the residential towers would overlook the racetrack furthest from existing housing. ”The majority of the development would be on the western side of the existing racecourse land, which is Dean Street, McPherson Street, down through Thomas Street,” he said.

Mr Browell said the racing club was in a ”fantastic” position with freehold land in an area designated for major development.

”All up, we are projecting the gross value in the redevelopment could be upwards of $1.25 to $1.4 billion, and then the club would be looking to net roughly $300 million, so that we can invest that back into a new racetrack and grandstands and have some surplus funds left over,” he said.

Opposition planning spokesman Brian Tee questioned why the minister was being briefed on the plan before the local residents.

”Here we have got the minister and the developer hand-in-hand and the public are being left out,” he said. ”Why is the public always the last to know?”

In response to concerns about Melbourne’s rampant growth, Premier Ted Baillieu said yesterday that his government was being forced to play catch-up with its planning policies because the former Labor government had done so little to deal with the city’s unprecedented population boom. Mr Baillieu said Labor had virtually ignored the consequences as it chased a higher population to sustain economic growth.

The Age revealed last week that Melbourne had grown by 605,000 residents, the equivalent of six Ballarats, in the nine years to 2010, pushing out the city’s urban boundaries and increasing pressure on transport infrastructure and housing affordability.

Mr Baillieu said his government was concerned about the boom and its effects on Melbourne’s infrastructure. ”In the last 10 years … we haven’t seen the planning or the investment,” he said.

”What we’ve seen is population growth become an end in itself. ”The previous government became dependent on population growth for economic growth. [The state government] is going to be in a situation where we have to catch up because this state has fallen behind in the investment in the core infrastructure and the core facilities … It’s not something that we can do overnight.”

But Mr Tee said Mr Baillieu had still not presented an alternative vision on how to fix Melbourne’s problems. ”Mr Baillieu is choosing to act like an opposition leader rather than a premier by failing to outline how he will make sure Victorians have access to the services and facilities they will need in the future,” he said.

”It’s time Mr Baillieu wakes up and realises reviews, delaying important projects and dithering over every decision won’t build new infrastructure, hospitals or schools. Only vision, planning and hard work will.”