No money for Esplanade

The City of Melbourne’s recently-announced draft budget again failed to include funding for the long-awaited Harbour Esplanade upgrade.

Last year, the council’s finance chair Arron Wood predicted the 2019/20 budget would include funding for the development.

He told Docklands News at the time: “This will mean in the 2019/20 budget we will get this long-awaited project up and running once and for all.”

In response to our questioning this year, Cr Wood said the project was contingent on agreement with the state government on the future upgrade and expansion of Marvel Stadium and renewal of Central Pier.

He said: “For many years City of Melbourne has worked with Development Victoria (DV) to get this renewal underway, including an endorsed masterplan submitted by DV.”

“Since approval of the masterplan after extensive community consultation the substantial upgrade of Marvel Stadium has been announced and an assessment of works required to renew Central Pier have been undertaken.”

“That’s why in the last budget I pushed for $200,000 to be allocated to update the masterplan with a view to getting on with the job. Unfortunately, the City of Melbourne is a relatively small part the upgrade – with DV and Marvel Stadium having much greater tracts of land under their control.”

“Frustratingly, this has pushed the Harbour Esplanade works back. However, it would wasteful for City of Melbourne to proceed on upgrading the bit we manage, only to see it dug up again as the bigger works occur with the Marvel Stadium upgrade.”

“It’s small consolation that the result will be a precinct worthy of the harbour location and it’ll deliver much needed community facilities for Docklands.”

“Development Victoria will be updating City of Melbourne on the masterplan in June and I want to assure the Docklands community that we’ll continue to push hard to get this project underway.”