Queens Pde Neighbourhood Activity Centre | Planning News July 2019

The City of Yarra and the local community are currently grappling with the preferred approach to development controls for the Queens Parade Neighbourhood Activity Centre. The discussion raises a number of questions which go to the heart of redevelopment in a heritage area.

·      Which control should be used to guide development in a Heritage Precinct?

·      How much say should the community have in planning a Neighbourhood Activity Centre?

·      Are setbacks and height limits always the best design solution for respecting heritage features or e.g. should it be possible to add a floor, build to the boundary and add a fake pediment? Why is one ‘visible’ alteration more valuable/ respectful of heritage than another? We have a lot of poor-quality pop ups on the top of heritage buildings!

·      Why is ‘visibility’ or ‘invisibility’ not allowed as a consideration?

·      Why do there have to be development opportunities in every location?

·      And, in the meantime, what’s the best response to the Apartment Armageddon unfolding around the country? A moratorium on apartments? Don’t buy one until all defects in all apartments have been fixed?

 Planning controls on Queens Pde

Council advertised and exhibited Amendment C231, covering 5 precincts along Queens Parade, in October and November 2018. The amendment proposes to replace Schedules 16 and 20 to the Design and Development Overlay (DDO) with a new Schedule 16 to guide the height, setback and scale of future development on Queens Parade. This is because the current DDOs are interim and will expire in January 2020. The amendment has been informed by recommendations provided by GJM Heritage (GJM) as outlined in the Queens Parade Heritage Analysis. Around 120 properties are named as contributory or non-contributory under an existing Heritage Overlay (HO330) so the amendment also proposes to add the GJM study to the list of documents in Clause 22.02 Heritage Policy.

Neighbourhood Activity Centre

Queens Parade and the suburbs on either side, North Fitzroy and Clifton Hill (to the south and east) provide a perfect example of the 20-minute neighbourhood. The shopping strip is generally thriving with almost the full range of goods and services available (and there are nearby centres at Westgarth and North Fitzroy with a cinema, massive wholefoods supermarket and public library which fill in the only gaps I can think of!). Taking a slightly reverse view of the 20 minute concept - within a twenty minute walk of Clifton Hill Post Office on Queens Parade there are; three railway stations, several tram and bus stops, large parks and formal gardens, the Collingwood Leisure Centre, Kindergartens, Primary schools, a High School, three old people’s homes/ retirement villages, supported accommodation, public housing estates and extensive, generally wealthy, medium density residential areas. The city end of Queens Parade has several high-density housing developments and there will be a further 1700 dwellings added on the old Gasworks site.

History and Heritage

This 20-minute neighbourhood was partially planned and then created by public and private investment and developed in the era of walking and public transport. Colonial settlement – primarily hotels – followed the road to Heidelberg and the Plenty districts, which runs diagonally to Hoddle's survey grid through the North Fitzroy Crown reserve. In 1850 the road was proclaimed as Queens Parade, one of Melbourne's 3 chain (60 metre) government roads, now called 'Hoddle boulevards'. Further growth occurred after 1869 when horse-drawn omnibuses began running and once the cable tram route developed between 1883 and 1887, the local shopping strip developed.

The Heritage Overlay ‘statement of significance’ (HO330) notes that the commercial development along the boulevard is ‘to the property alignment along a number of streets and on corners’ and that this adds to the aesthetics of the area.

Development halted during the 1890s Depression until Federation when substantial commercial buildings began to replace earlier development on both sides of the boulevard. The MMBW Detailed Plans from around 1900 show this commercial strip development and street verandas and trees lining both sides of the street. Infill development, of generally two stories, in the 1970s and 80s was also built to the boundary of the block thus maintaining the streetscape. (The Protect Fitzroy North Facebook page has a film of the tram operating along Queens Parade in the Jurassic Era and it looks almost unchanged!!).

Among the reasons for why the Queens Parade Precinct (HO330) is significant, as outlined on the Victorian Heritage Data base are:

·      For the late 19th and early 20th century shops, hotels, banks, and public buildings, often with intact street verandahs, lining both sides of a wide boulevard that provides for exceptional vistas to fine commercial rows, and demonstrates the major role of Queens Parade as a commercial, banking, accommodation and public transport nucleus for the district;

·      As a good representation of building styles from the mid-19th century to the late 1930s, enhanced by prominent landmarks such as the former banks, St. John's Catholic Church complex, and the United Kingdom Hotel, the latter two being primary foci in the precinct;

·      For the remarkable collection of original street verandahs particularly on the north side of the street;

·      For the picturesque shop-row skyline, visible from across Queens Parade, with its gabled or hipped roof forms and many original chimneys…

Community planning

Council received three hundred and ninety-nine (399) written submissions to the Amendment.

·      Two were from a planning consultant on behalf of a developer; 


·      295 were from residents / property owners either in the DDO area or (almost all) from its immediate surrounds. (Declaration of interest: mine was one of these);

·      One was from traders from 34 different establishments in Queens Parade. 


·      95 were from addresses outside the precinct and surrounding area or did not identify their interest in the area, and 


·      Six were from community and interest groups: the Collingwood Historical Society, National Trust, Fitzroy Residents’ Association, Royal Historical Society of 
Victoria, 3068 Group and Protect Fitzroy North Inc. 


Most submitters proposed that the height of any development should be limited so that nothing could be visible above the parapet from the other side of the road and views to (usually) blue sky above the parapet could be retained. The submissions argued that the centre is a neighbourhood activity centre and not a major activity centre and that development elsewhere on Queens Parade - the Gasworks, 26-56 Queens Parade and in Precinct 5 (behind McDonalds) meant that Queens Parade was already accommodating growth. They argued that allowing tall development in the historic retail precinct for a relatively small gain in additional housing was unnecessary. In particular, submitters want new development in precinct 4 to not be visible from the opposite side of Queens Parade.

A number of submitters, including the National Trust asked for the Amendment to be abandoned and for Council to use its existing Heritage controls to guide responses to development applications in the HO330 precinct.

The National Trust submission states:

“We submit that allowing higher built form to be set back only 6m from the frontage will result in new development that would visually overwhelm what remains of the heritage entity and eliminate the ‘picturesque shop-row skyline, visible from across Queens Parade, with its gabled or hipped roof forms and many original chimneys’…

We believe that the proposed DDO creates a development entitlement that is far in excess of what might be considered reasonable under the Heritage Overlay. Clause 22.02-4 of the Yarra Planning Scheme sets out the Objectives of the Development Guidelines for Sites subject to the Heritage Overlay (and includes):

·      To preserve the scale and pattern of streetscapes in heritage places. 


It is our concern that the gazettal of this amendment will set a benchmark for other significant historic strip centres across the municipality, and potentially across the state, so it is essential that a robust planning outcome is set out in the first instance.”

It is interesting that ‘Plan Melbourne’ distinguishes between planning for Activity Centres and planning for Neighbourhood Activity Centres. Policy 5.1.2 notes that local communities are  ‘to lead the planning of’ neighbourhood activity centres’. I spent many years working on Activity Centre policy and I’m still not sure that I understand what this means, however, it seems clear that over 350 submissions all saying the same thing indicate that the local community has spoken in this case.

Council’s response to submissions

Council officers have worked very hard to accommodate the community’s concerns. They have rewritten the DDO and this has been circulated and been the subject of discussion at a special council meeting on 28th May where the community had the opportunity to speak about their concerns. This new version of the DDO has been endorsed by Council as a preferred version and will now be taken a Planning Panel in August. 

Some comments from Council’s response to the submissions provide an insight into the approach Council has taken to rewriting the DDO (and this has been extensive):

“Council acknowledges that the former Gas Works and precincts 2 and 5 will carry the bulk of new development in the activity centre and given the intact nature of the heritage in the shopping precinct, the DDO has been recalibrated to favour heritage.

Building height in precinct 4 has been reduced from 21.5 metres to 14 metres – a reduction of two storeys. Setbacks have been increased from 6 metres to 8 metres. 


The reduction in height has been informed by modelling undertaken by Ethos Urban which shows that new development above the shops will be visible above the parapet but the heritage fabric will remain the dominant element in the streetscape and the views to important heritage landmarks (the belfry and spire of St John’s and the former ANZ bank) will be protected”. 


Council notes that “the ‘no visibility’ option of two or three storeys is too restrictive in a Neighbourhood Activity Centre. It would restrict development to one additional storey or possibly a fourth level with a very substantial setback. Such an option does not represent a balanced outcome and is not supported”.

For me, as a submitter who seeks ‘no visibility”, this is unsatisfactory but the DDO as revised by Council, with a strong emphasis on Heritage, does seem to offer the possibility that each application would be assessed against criteria that would certainly limit development and possibly result in a desirable outcome. Indeed, most submitters feel that this is the case and e.g the Protect Fitzroy Group regards Council’s response as a success.  Interestingly, however, there is a sub group which doesn’t feel their concerns have been addressed and there is a very strong alliance of residents and traders that has made an unprecedented bid to list the entire shopping strip on the Victorian Heritage Register.  (This received TV coverage on Channels 7 and 10 and in the Herald Sun recently).

Conclusions

Among other things, this exercise has highlighted the difference between a Heritage Overlay (HO) and a Design and Development Overlay (DDO) - noted in the National Trust submission.  As Council notes, “the HO (and the associated policy in the Planning Policy Framework) deals with heritage matters. The DDO deals with built form matters. To address the shortcomings of commercial heritage in the current heritage policy and to reflect the fact that heritage is an important component of the built form in Queens Parade, the DDO introduced heritage design requirements at clause 2.3 of the schedule. The current heritage policy at Clause 22.02 of the Yarra Planning Scheme has a residential focus. The heritage policy in the planning scheme is being rewritten as part of a broader planning scheme rewrite. The revised policy will strengthen protection for commercial and former industrial heritage. The intention is to remove these requirements from the DDO when the new heritage policy is approved and included in the planning scheme.

Meanwhile, we are waiting for the outcomes of the Panel hearing in August.

Julian Golby