Over the past week or so we have had announcement after announcement regarding the proposed changes to our activity centres. All bereft of strategic justification and lacking essential detail as to eventual heights, open space provision or infrastructure and its appropriate funding. We await the gazetting of other plans.
This tsunami of proposed changes will undoubtedly impact Glen Eira more than other councils and most will be without third party objection rights.
We itemise below each of these proposals –
Moorabbin
The changes to the Moorabbin major activity centre will affect Glen Eira in many ways. The latest version is depicted in the image below. Please note that Glen Eira sites feature north of South Road and north/east of Nepean Highway. The other areas included are within the Kingston and Bayside areas.
A summary of the most important changes are:
- Catchment areas increased all the way from South Road to Patterson Road. Highly questionable whether this range is really 800m or simply as the crow flies.
- The areas marked light blue are currently zoned as NRZ (ie two storey height limit). They will now be rezoned as suitable for up to three storeys and some four storeys depending on land size.
- Most of the green coloured sites now have a three storey height limit which will be increased to six storeys.
- Car parking requirements remain unknown
Thus hundreds of Glen Eira sites are impacted.
Railway Stations/Activity Centres
Yesterday’s announcement of another list of activity centres about to be changed forever has Glen Eira featuring prominently. We will now have 5 areas designated for major high density development – Bentleigh, Ormond, Glen Huntly, Elsternwick, and Caulfield. No other details as to heights, setbacks, parking, infrastructure, etc. has been released, nor most importantly what size their respective ‘catchment areas’ will be. We have no idea as to whether we are looking at 10 or 12 storeys (even though North Road has already been granted the ‘right’ for 10 storeys as this stage).
The only other council to have 5 areas nominated is Stonnington. What’s important to bear in mind is that Glen Eira is only 38.9 square km in size compared to most other councils. We also lack the commercial areas that Stonnington and other councils have – ie we are basically a residential municipality compared with the size of the commercial areas in other councils. (ie Glen Eira has 3.8% of land zoned commercial compared to Stonnington nearing 9%). With the prospect of all these areas suddenly becoming high density, this could mean that close to half of our municipality will now be a developer’s paradise. Glen Huntly currently has, according to profile.id data, a population density of 5,824 persons per square km – the highest in Glen Eira as well as being one of the smallest suburbs. Parts of our drainage system feature pipes that are 100 years old; our roads are often narrow, and congestion is already a major headache.
Equitable distribution of increased population planning does not seem to exist for this government. As long as there are railway stations, then the myth continues to be propagated that this is suitable for high density regardless of the fact that:
- People living in one or two bedroom apartments still own cars as we’ve recently illustrated
- More dwellings does not mean more affordable housing. When three bedroom apartments can sell for over $3m and two bedroom apartments for $1.4m then affordable housing is truly a myth in most of Glen Eira.
The tsunami of recent media releases by this government appears to mirror the Trump techniques – inundate readers with a deluge so that the ability to clearly focus, question, and assess becomes limited. Secondly resort to spin and more spin that simply makes no sense except to push a political agenda creating the impression that government is actually doing something.
Unless our council is prepared to become far more proactive and critical, as other councils have, then Glen Eira is basically doomed. It will, in our opinion, become the ghettos of either high priced luxury apartments, or our future slums with no real advance on affordable homes or protecting existing residential amenity.
Glen Eira Debates 
February 28, 2025 at 3:04 PM
You’ve nailed it. Labor is on the nose and this is nothing more than politics in action. It won’t save them.
February 28, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Age has got a report on council officers refusing to sign NDAs with gov. My bet is that our mob would be directed to sign. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/council-staff-refuse-to-sign-secrecy-deals-over-hated-level-crossing-plan-20250227-p5lfky.html
February 28, 2025 at 11:45 PM
People have had enough of this chop and change and street closures and what has become continual disruption in every corner of every neighborhood. Do we really want to live in a perpetual state of activity?. Activity Centres what a joke.
One analyst summed it up, the amount of apartment building projects ready to go is enormous. However they remain dormant, simply because the cost to purchase one of these apartments when finished is above what people can afford to pay and what banks are willing to lend. Add the predominance of substandard builds, due to systemic corruption within the VBA to enforce any standard has led to a stalemate.
The cost of building materials has pushed the value of owning a apartment out of sight for the people entering the market of home ownership . Add to this, the actual value of our money is declining at a rapid rate. Importing cheap unskilled as unsupervised workers has only made the the situation worse. Built time for apartments have blow-out to years and years.
The “Build To Rent” have stalled as well, developers want quick sales after completion. Investors looking for a rental property/s to exploit, have wised-up and are being warned away from buying and being saddled with shoddy built investment apartment that will need constant repairs that just eat your profits away, and the capital invested declines along with the problems.
We are living in a giant mess, that has been delivered to us by both Liberal and Labor Government over the last 20 plus years. And it only going to get worse.
March 1, 2025 at 12:33 PM
This latest mess is brought to us by the same incompetent and corrupt bunch that predicted Glen Eira’s population would be 121000 in 2021, and continued to do so after it hit 158000. There’s so much to criticise. Just the opening pages of “Plan for Victoria” is vomit-inducing. It gaslights us, claiming it’s “A plan by Victorians, for Victorians”. Really its a plan written by a tiny subset of Victorians with the needs of very few Victorians in mind.
Even the alleged people’s panel vision resorts to some of the most egregious marketing tropes imaginable: “By 2050, Victoria will be a vibrant, accessible and connected community, valued for its diverse cultures, sustainable environmental practices and respect for the First Peoples of Victoria.”
We’ve had Plan Melbourne, Plan Melbourne Refresh et al ad nauseum. That’s 25 years to assess whether State Government plans ever deliver what they claim.
As for GECC, it hasn’t helped. Instead of standing up to the worst excesses of State Government, it meekly complies with barely a whimper. It was GECC that thought borrowed light was an acceptable design technique. It was also GECC that advocated for 2.1m ceiling height. It was GECC that decided overshadowing habitable room windows was acceptable if it meant a developer could squeeze in an extra apartment. Not even accessway standards were safe from the depredations of GECC, standards designed to ensure pedestrian safety. More recently we’ve seen some councillors lobbying on behalf of the development industry to encourage reliance on on-street parking rather than developments meeting their parking needs–shifting costs to maximise developer profit. Even when it is GECC that is responsible for the failure of a development to comply with its Planning Permit, it continues to tell the public FU.