“The Melbourne Racing Club and the Beck Probuild Consortium are pleased to announce that they have concluded an agreement to develop 5 hectares of land adjacent to the Caulfield Racecourse, Caulfield Train Station and Monash University.
The winning consortium is a joint venture between the Beck Property Group and Probuild Constructions.
Caulfield village will create a thriving, integrated, mixed use community with access to major transport routes, shopping and recreation designed to integrate with the character and facilities of the surrounding community.
The development is expected to take up to 15 years to complete and include in excess of 1,500 dwellings of varying product mix and configuration, office and retail offerings including a full line supermarket, pharmacy, cafes, restaurants and lifestyle health and gym facilities.
Source: http://www.beckpropertygroup.com.au/beck-caulfield-village
COMMENTS:
- 1000 – 1200 originally cited dwellings has now ballooned out to ‘in excess of 1500’! Will this mean 28 storeys?
- The Panel in its wisdom stated: “The scale of the amendment area and its location is that development will occur over an extended time period, the Panel expects up to 10 years.” We’re now looking at 15 years! Terrific news for locals!
PS: We’ve received an email with the following link. It features the Moonee Valley Council’s response on open space to their racecourse proposals. Once again, the contrast with how this council works to protect its residents in contrast with our illustrious lot is simply staggering. We urge readers to at least look at the Executive Summary and note the work that has gone into this.
Glen Eira Debates 
January 10, 2013 at 1:06 PM
Clairvoyants aren’t needed here. Once the application comes in to council the gang will say that we have to give them what they want because it will go to vcat and will be even worse. We’ll make it 1400 units and 25 storeys and to hell with the fact that of this 1400 300 at least won’t have direct sunlight into bedrooms and yes we’ll have a construction plan but won’t patrol to make sure they keep to the rules. Meanwhile Newton will have got himself a job no doubt with the mrc.
January 10, 2013 at 1:22 PM
Newton and his cronies have lifetime tenures, don’t they? It seems the case as their positions are never tested in the market place.
As for over development, I’ve just become accepting of it as part of the lack of foresight in planning these days. It’s been a long time since visual bulk, site coverage, amenity of the neighbourhood, traffic and parking implications et al meant anything.
January 10, 2013 at 2:17 PM
There is “foresight” in planning. The name of the game in Glen Eira is to give developers everything they want. All that has to happen is to ignore residents and manipulate everything to achieve the desired outcomes. Glen Eira planning in a nutshell.
January 10, 2013 at 4:12 PM
From The Age –
Welcome to the all-new Stalinist block
Date
January 10, 2013
Category
Opinion
113 reading now
Michael Gurr
Footscray’s forbidding apartments are at odds with the community they serve, writes Michael Gurr.
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Soviet chic? … An artist’s impression of the proposed Footscray train station redevelopment.
Soviet chic? … An artist’s impression of the proposed Footscray train station redevelopment. Photo: Grocon
Been to Footscray lately? No? Well hurry because the bad guys are moving in. No, I don’t mean the man in the orange trackies selling methamphetamine to his mates and buying himself a ticket straight back to prison. And I don’t mean the young couple with the toddler in the stroller and a pit bull on a piece of string within biting distance of their child’s face.
Not them. I mean the real bad guys. The architects.
If you’ve ever wondered what happened to Stalin’s builders and Ceausescu’s infrastructure designers, come to Footscray. If the communist bloc still existed, Footscray’s new apartment buildings are what their security headquarters would look like. These buildings are big, grey and black, have a sort of symmetrical jigsaw pattern to them and look like they’re built out of very thin recycled cement.
You can’t even tell whether they are occupied. A little ficus or palm will poke its head up over a frosted glass balcony for about two days and then die. Even the washing on the balconies looks like it’s struggling for its life.
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What is it with these buildings? Apart from their sameness, their forbidding facades, their addiction to grey and black? There isn’t a kind line in them. They seem to refuse human involvement. Not a curve to be seen. You walk past them and feel superfluous to the building. Aren’t buildings meant to like us?
Even on still days you walk past these buildings and feel windswept. It’s like your involvement in what planning authorities call “the built environment” isn’t welcome. They reject the street. Buildings are not just for the people who live in them; they are for the people who live around them.
Don’t get me wrong, urban density is a good thing. New neighbourhoods, new and cheaper options to live close to where you work: these are a plus.
Maribyrnong Council is the pushover council of Melbourne. Developers call it “over-easy” behind its back. It would give you a planning permit to have asbestos parties in the Nicholson Street Mall if it helped balance the books. But what it is creating is a kind of new brutality that in 15 years will look even worse than it does today.
With one hand, this council puts out nice multicultural discussion papers, funds inclusive festivals and likes its African restaurants. But with its other hand, its planning hand, it approves development that pulls down the shutters on its street-fronts and makes its residents hurry, not pause. It really wouldn’t be that hard to make it otherwise. It makes you wonder: do the architects really hate us this much? What did we ever do to them?
True, the architects of big projects are among the most disappointed people you will ever meet. On the glare and sulk scale, they are top of the pops. They are worse than most in their loathing of their peers’ work. But their cynicism is a mask for their sadness. They dream cathedrals and calm parks and are forced to build rubbish in Stickle Brick. The intensity with which they hate the work of other architects is outdone only by the intensity of shame they feel about their own.
But do they have to offload their professional misery onto the rest of us? Wouldn’t it be great if they sat down in meetings and said something radical such as: ”Let’s build something friendly. Let’s build something that the neighbourhood might like.”
The economic pressure is to build right to the property line; the effect of this is to exclude the neighbourhood. Just a small indent from the street would give some local entrepreneur the chance for a small shop, an internet cafe or, god forbid, an op shop.
No two people will ever agree on what a friendly development looks like but I think we can agree on the times when someone is trying for it. A sense of neighbourhood, buildings that answer to the population rather than bully it. Places where the old can sit and the young can play. It’s not that big an ask.
In the meantime, Stalin’s bastards are shouldering their way into Footscray and we’ll all have to live with them with for the rest of our lives.
Michael Gurr is a freelance writer.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/welcome-to-the-allnew-stalinist-block-20130109-2cgor.html#ixzz2HXwRNmo1
January 10, 2013 at 10:18 PM
These shops and other amenities will greatly improve the area. Might even buy myself one of the apartments off the plan. Great location and the best part of Glen Eira.
January 11, 2013 at 7:01 AM
Go for it – buy off the plan. Hopefully yours will be the first built and then you can continually dust, watch and listen to the rest being constructed for the next 10-12 years. You’ll have plenty of time to do that ’cause you’ll find your car next to useless – already congested roads will be worse, on a 24/7 basis (not only from this development but also from the Monash development and the developments occuring on the Stonnington side of Dandenong Road) and the worse will come as soon as construction starts. Using public transport will be equally useless because you won’t be able to get on it (State Govt spending on trains and trams ain’t gonna happen). Walking and cycling ain’t gonna be an option either due to traffic congestion and fumes. Of course if you do fancy leaving your unit and going to a nearby park you better make sure the centre of the racecourse is open or that the supposed new park at the Glen Eira Road roundabout has actually been developed.(rather than just fenced off and whippersnipped)
January 11, 2013 at 9:03 AM
I am impressed with the Moonee Valley report. When the panel report was taking place for the C60 no documentation that I can bring to mind went to the bother of calculating open space in a manner similar to what the Valley council has done. The entire argument rested on the availability of Booran Reservoir, the racecourse centre, and Caulfield park to cater for the mass population increase and further development everywhere in the area. The tragedy is that Booran reservoir will not be accessible for another 5 years at least and Caulfield park has already had its open space reduced via the pavilion footprint and car parking. The racecourse centre is another kettle of fish altogether. It does not signify an increase in public open space – it has always (allegedly) been “open space”. Access has been denied and continues to be denied.
Every single aspect of the C60 and centre of the racecourse agreement reeks of collusion between council and the mrc. Residents have not been protected, nor has any real attempt been made to achieve a fair compromise. Negligence is not too harsh a word to use in these circumstances I believe.