City Sends ‘Embarrassing’ Stadium Project Packing

An amendment put up by the Australian Football League and Development Victoria has been described as one of the most embarrassing applications the City of Melbourne has seen.

At its May 7 meeting, the Future Melbourne Committee slammed the proposed planning scheme amendment by the two organisations to redevelop part of the Marvel Stadium precinct. 

Development Victoria owns the site at 140-160 Harbour Esplanade, Docklands, which includes the Australian Football League’s headquarters.

Planning Scheme Amendment C438melb proposes redeveloping the western edge of the Docklands Stadium Precinct under a new site-specific planning control.

That control will sit within an incorporated document or masterplan for the site designed by Grimshaw Architects. 

The masterplan includes land use definitions, building envelope and publicly accessible areas, with three towers proposed comprising 181,730sq m of gross floor area.

Tower heights for the three highrises outlined in the plan are 129m, 113m and 90 metres.

There are also publicly accessible private spaces and pedestrian links connecting Harbour Esplanade to the Marvel Stadium concourse. 

The Future Melbourne Committee voted unanimously to inform the Victorian Department of Transport and Planning that the City of Melbourne would not support the amendment until several key issues were resolved.

▲ A render of two towers that could replace the current Channel 7 building and AFL House on Harbour Esplanade in Melbourne’s Docklands.

While planning officers had recommended supporting the proposed amendment, they also noted several key issues that gave City of Melbourne councillors pause for thought.

Planning officers also questioned the lack of a community benefit such as affordable housing or community space.

“This proposal is seeking site -pecific approvals without the approval of other key contractual documents,” City of Melbourne’s deputy lord mayor Nicholas Reece said.

“We have shadow diagrams that we can’t assess because we don’t have the proposals for what’s going to happen for the public space surrounding this area. 

“So essentially, we know that there’s going to be new public space created in these areas, but we’re not able to assess whether these structures will actually overshadow the future parks.”

Cr Rohan Leppert said that as Development Victoria, a government organisation, was a co-proponent of the project, there needed to be more information provided before the council could make a proper judgement.

“There’s 11 threshold issues that are addressed in the officers report that we need to see before we can even make a decision—this isn’t about whether we like the designs or not,” Leppert said.

“We cannot consider this in isolation unless we understand what’s happening right next to it on Harbour Esplanade. 

“This is among the largest and most significant developments and it is co-sponsored by the government. 

“Government needs to lead by example and it is just not good enough that that entire strategic framework is missing.”

▲ Marvel Stadum in Melbourne’s Docklands.

Some of those concerns were the lack of sufficient time for a design review panel, no consideration of community benefit, and no information on movement and wayfinding, flood mitigation, adaptive reuse, shadow analysis and wind mitigation.

Representatives from Urbis, Grimshaw Architects, Development Victoria and the Australian Football League were not present at the meeting.

“This has to be one of the most embarrassing applications we’ve ever seen,” Cr Jamal Hakim said.

“Someone’s clearly dropped the ball on this application—either that or we’re all missing something really dodgy. 

“That is made worse by the fact that no one’s here to speak on behalf of the applicant.”

Other councillors echoed the sentiment, saying they wanted development to go ahead but not without proper consideration of all the different concerns and issues and consequences for neighbouring sites and the Docklands community.

“I would love to find a way to get to yes but we can’t reverse engineer nonsense strategic justifications,” Leppert said.

Reece agreed.

“We are really committed to getting to yes and having a major project move forward here but we want it to be a development that Docklands and Melbourne and all of us can be really proud of,” Reece said. 

The final determination will be made by Victorian planning minister Sonya Kilkenny.