Council Officer Chris White (00:00):

I just want to give some background as to where the funding came from.

The context being the Federal Government. The history of the Federal Government funding comes from a broader program, that's a $4 billion program to reduce urban congestion across various parts of Australia. Under that $4 billion program, there's a $650 million program for commuter car parking. This aims to be one of the opportunities and initiatives that the Federal Government has launched in order to support the ability for people to park and ride, so have an intermodal exchange point. They have very much targeted commuter car parking, obviously to align where there's key interchanges, particularly train, in many cases, train and tram are often the locations that they've targeted in many cases across Australia. There's quite a few within Victoria to date.

Council Officer Chris White (01:08):

The City of Boroondara has received seed funding for the point of doing background research, that encompasses a range of things that we will go into a little bit later, but a lot of it's the technical research around: is it technically viable to build a car park from the footprint, the site constraints, those sorts of issues. We've also utilised that to undertake some background market research, to understand the sentiment and the demand from a broader perspective as well. Key conditions of the funding is the land must be Council owned. So there's a number of State owned sites but that hasn't been an offer on the table from the Federal Government. It is only Council owned sites that we can investigate and to be provided free of charge. Councils, as I said, has used all this seed funding to engage resources, to assist us with it, to engage many consultants with expertise, to further understand the opportunities and the site constraints and to understand what the site potentially might look like. This is of particular interest to Council Officers because the urban fabric in many of these places are steeped in history and we want to make sure that whatever could potentially be realised would be sympathetic to the surrounding form. And also further to understand what the impacts may be particularly with traffic. If we are to proceed the funding offer currently on the table from the Federal Government for Glenferrie is $15 million.

Council Officer Chris White (02:50):

This program targets four locations within the City of Boroondara, three of these locations at Glenferrie, Camberwell and Canterbury. These are all Council owned sites that have been investigated. The exception is one State site, because it comes under the LXRP, so that is the broader program that the State's been running to underground railway lines, Surrey Hills is subject to that broader LXRP site and in this case, the State Government and the Federal Government are working together to provide parking at Surrey Hills. Obviously for Glenferrie, it covers the Lilydale, Belgrave and Alamein lines. So it is a significant interchange point.

Potential community benefits, I know that'll be of interest to many people. You know it's not just about commuter car parks for Council. We want to know and understand what other additional community benefits there can be apart from community commuter car parking one being upgrading existing car parks to improve safety, accessibility, lighting amenity, and overall usability, ensuring that the parking would be safe free parking for both long and short term parking. Looking at those options, and more short and long term parking that would support initiatives as part of the Place Plan, the long term parking too importantly, we've been negotiating with a Federal Government that off peak, so weekends and in the evenings when use is lower for commuting, but that car parking is made available for broader use. So for people wanting to come to the center to shop or to dine, maximizing those opportunities by having that car parking available for those purposes.

We know that parking is a complex issue, it's not new to Boroondara and it's not new to most local Government areas. These are verbatim comments from people as part of the Boroondara Community Plan that was undertaken recently and to your right, you can see there's a lot of issues around having better integration of public transport, having less restrictive parking conditions that people want access to public transport and able to park at the station. As parking can be really hard to find at times, that it should be made easy to get around and to park and to visit local businesses ensuring there is adequate parking, so we can access local businesses making traffic along Glenferrie road one way.

Council Officer Chris White (05:42):

So it's more pedestrian friendly, improving parking for those using public transport is important since the zoning out of parking in the streets around the train stations makes it restrictive. Focusing on retaining quiet streets by creating more train station parking. So we know that there's that demand in the community, but on the flip side we also know that people are saying let's have and promote active transport, including cycling, walking, restricting parking, managing traffic congestion and improving parking. So we can get to the shops and parking needs to be improved, and I want less cars and more walking and bike lanes. So the purpose of this is to show that it's a complex issue because the community doesn't have one voice often, it's quite diverse and opposing opinions that reflect the broad range of what the community believes.

Council Officer Chris White (06:44):

Process of decision making from a governance perspective, it's important to Council that we share how Council will make a decision on this. So the first stage has been around undertaking the feasibility analysis, which is largely to do with the technical associations with this project. So it's looking at things like geotechnical investigations, so we can understand what the soil conditions are like, whether there's soil contamination in these sites that would impact costs, understanding the hydrology and flooding in these areas that would impact the project looking at cultural heritage assessments and risk mapping what the functional layout of the site could be. So working with traffic consultants on, what would potentially be the yield, the maximum yield that we could get to meet the objectives of the Federal Government, which is quite clear around, but also what can we get from a broader community perspective in additional short term parking, to support things like the draft Place Plan, high level cost estimates, looking at timeline, slow sorts of things, all fit under the feasibility.

Council Officer Chris White (07:55):

In addition, as a background report, we've undertaken the market research, just to get an understanding on the broader demand that might exist and where people might be traveling from to understand that. Under stage two all this information was presented to Councillors so that they were aware and a decision was made to progress to community consultation, which we understand will really target the most impacted people, being people who often live the closest, and that's the stage that we are currently sitting in the community engagement opened on the 14th of December and goes through to the 10th of February. That extended period of just over two months was to enable people and recognizing that some people will be away for leave for a couple of weeks over that period. So we wanted the time to be extended, to enable the opportunity for people to have time to understand the information and to complete the survey.

Council Officer Chris White (08:53):

We have been promoting this extensively, letterbox dropping, extensive social media, drop in sessions have been available to promote and, and make people aware to access this information. At the completion at the 10th of February, there'll be a period of time just analysing all the data, inputting it into a format so that it can go into a report with the intent of this being presented to Council at the 28th of March Council meeting, for Councillors to make a decision on if they want to proceed with one or more, or any of these projects. As mentioned, placemaking is an important initiative. And today I'd like to welcome David Cohen. He's our Head of Placemaking and was the lead for the draft Placemaking Plan that many of you, I would imagine had a say in, and I will hand over to David, take us through some of the initiatives and have this project potentially unlock some of those opportunities.

Council Officer David Cowan (10:04):

Thanks, Chris, and good evening, everyone. You may have been aware that we've been working on a Place Plan for Glenferrie over the last almost two years now, since we started the project and was released late in 2021, and we received a lot of good community feedback. That draft place plan was based on two previous phases of community consultation, where we sought a lot of input from the community about what the aspirations were for Glenferrie, into the future. It's a really great precinct, but it has some challenges and, and part of that is around the impact of vehicles and, and lots of land dedicated to parking. During that consultation, a lot of people advised us that they wanted to have more space in the street for the community to use more greenery, more space for outdoor dining, more space for community events, et cetera.

Council Officer David Cowan (11:01):

So a core part of that strategy in the Glenferrie Place Plan was to look at how we can consolidate some of that surface parking. So it takes up less land in the precinct and free up more of that land for other uses, greenery and public space.

During the development of the place plan we looked at a few different sites that we currently use just for surface parking. So it's just large amounts of parking on the surface and whether we could better, better utilise those for other purposes. If we consolidate that together into multi-level parking ideally most of that underground, as with that we've identified in the Plan, a couple of locations, the sites we're talking about today and then also some of the other surface parking sites in the precinct, we're looking at how we can better utilise that land such as behind the City Hall, whether we can put the underground, build a library and create some green space above.

Council Officer David Cowan (12:14):

One of the really main benefits of relocating and reorganising, is that parking such takes up less land, it frees up particularly on Glenferrie road itself. It will create the opportunity for more people and a pedestrian friendly street environment with more space for outdoor dining, public seating, greenery bikeways et cetera. This is really outside of COVID times, a very vibrant and busy center, yet the footpaths are quite narrow and, and not very pleasant. They're not great for the businesses to utilise. It's not a great experience for visitors to the precinct, getting off the station and the trams and moving around. So if we can, if we can relocate this parking and configure it in other ways, then it will really create the opportunity to significantly uplift the appearance of the whole precinct by upgrading the street and the public spaces.

Council Officer David Cowan (13:08):

This is some of the key sites that, as I mentioned before, that the Place Plan targeted for relocation of parking, we did this in collaboration with this parking project team to look at the feasibility of where that parking could be located and where it couldn't. And there's a whole range of reasons behind that, that some will be described today such as flooding issues and access issues. It's really important to us that these sites where the parking does go are treated really well. So they're quite landscaped and have a great interface with the surrounding residents and businesses. So that people that utilise the parking can access it relatively easily without necessarily really congesting the center of the precinct and also, they have a safe environment where they can come out of the parking and be into the business area and do their shopping and go to events and go to the cinema, et cetera. So it's a good experience and frees up space for other types of transport use as well. So it'll improve the cycling, the pedestrian environment, the tram environment as well, so it will encourage other people to transport.

Council Officer David Cowan (14:35):

So this is the, I guess, visual of if the parking is consolidated into the Liddiard Street site, the proposal and the place plan indicates that one level below ground and three levels above ground that frees up a lot of land in the streetscape, and some other sites around the precinct for other uses. For example, the Wakefield street site could be reused for an innovation hub to attract new businesses to the area that will collaborate with the university. This concept also frees up the space behind those traditional shops. So instead of it just being a quite unpleasant environment at the moment, it would be a more pedestrian oriented laneway. So the rear of those shops could have restaurants or new shops that front onto that pedestrian oriented laneway. And again, it will be important to get some greenery and landscaping. So these buildings and structures have a really positive interface with the surrounding streets and, and neighbors.

Council Officer David Cowan (15:43):

This is some visuals of what that particular part of the precinct will look like. If we can relocate some of the parking from Wakefield street and, and build an innovation hub, then we can also provide access to the rear of some of those shops. So that image on the right provides a view from, I guess, where the Woolworths is looking north down that laneway at the moment, it's not a very pleasant environment, but we think there's a really good opportunity to create a great public realm, as well as business and community precinct. And if we move further north from, I think this is looking from Park Street up towards the car park between Liddiard and Park street. So the important thing here is that we can accommodate the parking in a way where the structure is designed to be sympathetic to its surroundings and is setback enough, so we can get a good amount of greenery and landscaping. So it doesn't have a negative impact on its surroundings, and, and it's a very pedestrian friendly environment too.

Council Officer Nadia Combe (16:49):

Hi everybody, my name is Nadia Combe, I'm one of the Council Officers who's been working on the development of our feasibility studies. So I'll just talk to you about a few of the findings that we have found.

So as mentioned earlier part of the funding was really to explore Council owned car parks. It was certainly not our intention to build on any open space or existing buildings. So from our initial feasibility, we investigated four sites. Initially we had investigated the Linda Crescent car park. We also investigated an option that would partially put a basement under Glenferrie oval, just behind help. We also investigated on the east side Wakefield street, existing car park and the Liddiard Street existing car park.

Council Officer Nadia Combe (17:51):

As mentioned, part of our initial considerations was really, is the site owned by Council? We also had to consider the spatial site considerations. So if the footprint of the site would enable the development of the car park, just note that I have skipped over point two regarding the flood risks. And I'll talk about that in the next slide in more detail, but we do know that a majority of the sites in this particular area are covered by a hundred year flood overlay. So we had to really spend a bit of time understanding the impacts of that and how that could potentially impact the development of a car park, particularly a basement, an option. The other option, the other key consideration was also looking at, you know, the impacts of any underground services easements and also undertaking any early costings to basically help us understand if we could develop a car park within the allocated budget. And then of course, some preliminary soil testing to understand if any of the soil was contaminated and how that might impact the delivery of the project. And also if there were any geotechnical details there such as the presence of rock or anything like that, that might also impact the deliverability of the project.

Council Officer Nadia Combe (19:08):

So earlier, in the middle of last year we sent out some preliminary letters to the community within 500 meter radius around each of the sites. That was really to kind of start the conversation about that Council was really starting to undertake these feasibility studies and when we had contractors out there potentially taking bore holes that the community would be able to understand that that was part of our feasibility.

So this was an attachment that came out with the letter. You will note that Linda Crescent isn't noted there. And that was again, a site that quickly came off the list, and again, I'll talk about that in the next slide, but this was to indicate the three sites, the three key sites that we were exploring at that moment.

Council Officer Nadia Combe (20:02):

So just some initial findings. So as mentioned before, I'm not sure if everyone's aware, I'm sure you are if you live in Glenferrie, that part of a majority of Glenferrie, particularly in this particular precinct is covered by a hundred year flood overlay as directed by Melbourne Water. And really it's about understanding what the impacts of that hundred year flood overlay and the potential hazards of, if a hundred year flood was to occur. You'll just note there that you can probably see in red that indicates the more hazardous flooding. You can probably make out at Glenferrie oval, and then just to the east of that, the location where Linda Crescent is located. So initially the idea was to develop a basement car park here, and through this, in, through this study, we realised that that was definitely not a possibility due to this flooding hazard.

Council Officer Nadia Combe (20:59):

I think it's really also important to understand, coupled with the management of this flooding hazard many years ago, Melbourne Water put in some very large barrel drains to deal with the potential flooding. They are 2.4 meters in diameter. They're brick, interlocked, very old drains, and you can see those indicated with the red lines. So there's actually two that run through Glenferrie. And with those, because they are quite assets, it was really essential that we tried to avoid and manage those as part of our feasibility. So just quickly in those colored areas there, you can see the four sites under the oval in the green. You can see the purple of Linda Crescent is Wakefield, and then yellow is Liddiard street.

Council Officer Nadia Combe (21:59):

Managing these large Melbourne Water storm water drains is really quite a significant constraint on these sites which then led to the dismissal of three of those sites. We know that the flooding that exists on Liddiard street can be managed. It's definitely not as hazardous as what was experienced on Linda crescent and under the oval. And furthermore, we know that we have developed a concept plan for Liddiard street, which looks to work around an offset from that Melbourne Water drain. So while we will still need to seek approval from Melbourne Water, we can certainly avoid it through our proposal.

Council Officer Nadia Combe (22:44):

Then we go into our preferred site Liddiard street, and there it is, there it's an existing snapshot of the site. As David mentioned before this site was also noted as part of the draft Glenferrie Place Plan. And as David also mentioned, we are looking at a five level car park with basement parking and three above ground.

So once we drilled down into Liddiard Street, these were some of the key tasks that we developed further. And one of the key tasks, or one of the key feasibility pieces of work that we really had to focus on with this project was the development of understanding the functional and conceptual layout of what a car park might be understanding what the traffic impacts and so on from this proposal, which will be its discussed in one of the breakout rooms a bit later, we also accessed the tree health, and we sought advice around the management of the hydrological issues and sought some drainage advice there.

Council Officer Nadia Combe (23:59):

As mentioned before we engaged external traffic engineering consultants, traffics group to assist us in understanding what potentially we could yield on this site and what the car park might look like. So their objectives were to really help us understand, as mentioned, how many car parks we could yield, the impacts of the local road network and significant intersections, as well as understanding the existing conditions of the local road network and the intersections, and also provide us with a general conceptual high level layout that we could start to, you know, talk to. And if we were to develop this project further, it gives us a firm place to work from.