Who benefits from market plan?

QVM redevelopment sounds good until you look at the detail.  Improvements can be made to the market without destroying it as we know it.

Who benefits from the new plan?

It won’t benefit shoppers. Having up-market restaurants and entertainment won’t help them.  People go to the market to shop, not to be entertained.

It won’t benefit stall operators.  Their rents will rise, they will lose their traditional customer base because the families from the suburbs won’t come any more.  It is definitely worse for residents near the market because the additional development will have a huge impact on them.

Who benefits?  Developers.  Because what is not shown is that the two city blocks next to the market are to be re-zoned and re-developed with 100 metre plus, high-rise buildings.  So the plan that the council shows does not really show what will happen.  The low-rise heritage area will be transformed forever.

There are many aspects of this plan that are illogical and will have negative consequences.  A simple thing to understand is the car parking.

The plan makes the current car park an open space. Great! But by removing the car parking in and around the site they are changing the nature of the market forever.

The market is something that has been accessible to many people from all around Melbourne. Cars are important to everyone because they allow people to do the weekly shop. People with families from all over Melbourne use the market. They fill up the car.  They don’t come to stay; they come to shop.

Council says it is removing 700 car-spaces that will be moved elsewhere.  They have not actually said how this will happen.

They say 400 spaces will be provided under the new massive building in Therry St.   But they don’t say how that will be accessed.   When you ask, they say “we haven’t worked that out yet!”   But it’s not 700 to 400, because  there are also another 200 plus car parks outside the market that will go because of the changes to Franklin St and selling off the land next to the market that now has public car parking.  But it gets worse because there are three public car parks that have serviced the market that are all being demolished for apartments.  So, in fact, where there were 2200+ car parks there will be 400 inaccessible car parks plus a promise for more?

This will change the nature of the market forever.  So it’s not just the changes of the market itself, but the changes to the whole area that will have a massive lasting impact.

Big buildings create traffic, trades, cleaners, services etc. People don’t understand the scale of the development that is about to occur across the city.

Our forefathers gave the market to the city council to hold in trust for all Melburnians.  This will change the market operation forever in a way that for most of the stakeholders gives no benefit.  So this is a case of spending huge amounts of taxpayer’s money to go backwards.

David Legge,
resident of Melbourne
(and property developer!)