Serviced apartments

The letter from Peter Kelly (Letter to the Editor, Docklands News, September) demonstrates a sad lack of awareness of the realities of trying to live with serviced apartments in residential buildings that were not designed for the purpose.

His suggestion that the serviced apartment issue has only developed within the last 18 months is patently incorrect, as any resident who has lived here longer than that could tell him.

My wife and I bought an aapartment in The Nolan off the plan, and moved in when the building was completed.

Unlike the Conder, there was no suggestion at any stage during the sale process that serviced apartments would be an option in this building.

I suspect that the majority of resident owners would agree with me that, if they had known that the situation would develop as it has, then they would not have purchased an apartment here.

Gil King’s letter in your August edition (although denigrated by Mr Kelly) was a good summary of the problems created by the mix of residential and short-term accommodation and I’m sure all resident owners and long-term tenants in NewQuay agreed with his sentiments.

Mr Kelly claims that all serviced apartment operators at NewQuay are “very responsible” and have helped to contribute to the area. He may well be right, however the following statistics for our building demonstrate why we consider there continues to be a problem.

There are 204 apartments in the Nolan; 60 of those are serviced apartments.

A summary of the reports from our security contractors show that from the beginning of 2012 to the middle of September there have been 206 reported instances of non-compliance with owners’ corporation rules, some minor, many of them serious.

145 of those relate to the 60 serviced apartments; 47 relate to the 144 residential apartments. 14 could not be allocated to specific apartments but, in most cases, appear to be caused by visitors to the building.

That is, serviced apartments appear in this list approximately seven times more often than residential apartments. Don’t let Peter Kelly tell you that residents cause as many problems as short-term visitors!

This is all in addition to the problems of overcrowding of lifts, damage to common property caused by visitors’ luggage and cleaners’ equipment, the additional expense to owners of upgraded security and cleaning time and the feeling of residents that their homes are being invaded by strangers who don’t care about their building.

Serviced apartments do not work in residential buildings.

Rob Tanner
NewQuay

Mindless vandalism

The attached photo shows what greeted residents of Victoria Harbour, Docklands, this morning.

Once again drunks and/or vandals decided to destroy the trees in Merchant St, north of Bourke St.

This is now the third time such has occurred in the past few months, although this time the vandalism was much worse.

My apartment building is on the corner of Bourke and Merchant streets and late every Saturday nights  and early Sunday mornings there are idiots in the street screaming and yelling with no concern for nearby residents - there are now four apartment buildings in a three-block radius (Merchant, Dock 5, Convesso and Serrata) with more to come (Forte and Concavo) and so more needs to be done to prevent this from occurring again.

Whilst it is hard to pinpoint any particular root to the problem, I believe one needs to look no further than the drunks who leave the bars to see where the problem lies – drunken patrons returning to their parked vehicles in Bourke St and the Safeway car park on Seafarers Lane.

Whilst council is to be praised for their work with these problems in the CBD, it is time that council looked further afield to the Docklands to prevent this unruly behaviour.

John Jackson

Docklands needs a school

I Googled the DEECD website and found a keynote lecture from The Hon. Martin Dixon, Minister for Education, Victoria on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 entitled  “Victoria as a Learning Community”.

Of course, we agree and all want to work together and achieve this vision.

But to achieve this, Docklands must have one primary and secondary school.

If we wait for the population it will never materialise.

There must be no more delay. By the time it is built, it will be over-populated. Without a school, Docklands will not be sustainable.

There will be only old people or retirees staying there with office workers. Docklands will not be beautiful and it won’t be vibrant without young families living there.

When we are old, we can’t reproduce.  And office workers return to the suburbs after work.

Why then is the Victorian Government and the City of Melbourne investing so much and trying so hard to expand Docklands as a vibrant suburb when it is missing this vision?

If the City of Melbourne is really going to expand Docklands it needs to be done sustainability.  

Docklands has so much development activity going on and, at the same time, it is driving away many young families and potential young families with kids because there is not a school.

 It will be a waste at the end of the day.

Chua