A strong council with the community behind it can stand up to powerful interests, and win. Two public campaigns of recent times – the Espy Hotel campaign (1997-2003) and the Triangle Wars (2007-2009) – demonstrate how a wise council listens to its citizens, while an out of touch Council pushes ahead regardless, and eventually comes unstuck.
The Espy
Some years ago we nearly lost our beloved Espy Hotel. The State Government wanted towers on our foreshore. A developer, Becton Corporation, who was at the time regarded amongst the key group of companies shaping Melbourne, stepped up with a proposal to build a 38-storey ‘Godzilla’ on the Espy Hotel site.
At a time when the Kennett State Government was quashing local planning concerns, a courageous Port Phillip Council rejected outright the developer’s proposal and stood firm against the State Government’s threat to call it in. It did so, because its citizens had submitted over 10,000 objections. It listened to them. And acted on their behalf.
Planning Minister, Rob Maclellan, was famous for calling in high-profile projects not approved by Councils. But on this occasion he didn’t. Premier Jeff Kennett, to his credit, respected the will of the people. The gamble paid off.
That brave Council did not bleat about being powerless, or hide behind commercial in confidence. The Councillors of 1998 were not risk averse patsies, who timidly give in without a fight. It was a progressive, courageous Council that dared to be different.
Shortly after that win, in March 1999, I was elected to Council. The battle over planning between Council and State Government was far from over. It continued for a further four years, with Council standing firm at each cross road.
One of our enduring achievements, of which I am particularly proud, is the groundbreaking amendment to the Port Phillip Planning Scheme (Amendment C25) to protect, for the first time, the ‘cultural use’ of a place. It was developed specifically to protect the Espy. As a Council member of the Esplanade Hotel Working Group, I played an active role in developing the principles to guide the drafting of the amendment.
Height was another issue. Becton had come down from 38 to 25 storeys, but that was still unacceptable for a site that had a six-storey limit. In the end, it was my proposal, which led the way out of the impasse. The Esplanade Hotel Working Group report singled out my work as providing an adequate basis on which to settle design/height issues. I had argued for a preferred eight-storey height limit and an absolute height limit of 10-storeys. It is that 10-storey building you see today flanking the Espy at its rear.
Last year, when the Espy owners applied to renovate the hotel, I was able to see that original amendment at work, protecting live music. The permit granted for the renovations stipulates that changes must not impact on the live music, and that the live music must return once the Espy reopens. The Espy continues. The resolute action by a courageous Council continues to shape our cultural and built environment.
Triangle Wars
In contrast to the Espy triumph, the actions of a secretive, and disengaged Council gave us the Triangle Wars. That epic struggle became a movie, but it began as a community campaign, which pitched Council against its citizens, and then, when Council refused to listen and went ahead to approve the Citta Triangle development proposal in 2007, it became a political campaign to unseat incumbents. Those Councillors, who voted yes, were thrown out at the next election (2008) and a new council, with experience and conviction, sent the development packing.
Under the experienced leadership of Mayor, Frank O’Connor, the newly elected Council negotiated to terminate the unpopular Triangle development granted to Citta. It cost the city $5M. Five million dollars was the price we had to pay for the mistakes of the previous Council, which had allowed officers rather than community to drive the vision, confused the meaning of conflict of interest, and simply did not stay fully informed. I was invited to consult to the design committee assessing the Triangle proposal; but my ideas for reclaiming the views were dismissed by officers, who failed to see how important those views to the bay are to the people of St Kilda.
Five million is a lot to pay for mistakes made by Councillors who refused to listen to thousands of objections, who shrugged away as ‘rabble’ the 2000 citizens who had marched to the Town Hall meeting to plead with Council to reject the proposal. The problem here was that all but two the Councillors lacked the acumen to hold firm against a bureaucracy top-heavy with managers, all of whom believed they knew better. Unlike in the Espy fight, this Council chose to side with the development against the community.
The Triangle challenge is by no means over. Since the Triangle Wars we’ve had some six years of elaborate consultation. We now have what essentially adds up to a 3-D illustrated sales brochure for the site, with which we can attract the right major partners and cultural institutions. It is a viable Masterplan, but by no means guarantees a successful outcome. Its success or failure is entirely in the hands of the next council.
It will be up to the new Council to translate the lofty concepts into clear, workable, planning guidelines. It will require feasible funding models and partnerships to ensure we get the thing of beauty we crave, and for which we may be willing to sacrifice some of the things we love.
But above all, it will be up to the new Council to have the courage to reject mediocrity, to not compromise on beauty, and to be prepared to pause, to hold off, and to preserve the site for a future opportunity of greatness, if one does not present itself in the next term. A mediocre development – one that destroys the opportunity for a better future development – is the worst possible outcome. We need to either get it right, now, for the next 50 years, or keep the opportunity alive with clever, nimble, temporary solutions.
This is how I would act, if elected. I do not believe that any of us has the mandate to push ahead regardless. We must continue to listen to new ideas and to respect old attachments, especially when it comes to our precious public assets. We must never take it as given that an old wooden jetty is unloved, or that an empty grass slope is not valued. Before we move to re-imagine or to remove, we need to listen, to be well informed, and to negotiate.
If we have the community with us, we can do anything; if we don’t we pay the price for hubris, secrecy, failure of vision and lack of resolve. There was too much of it in the last Council. It allowed the Palais Theatre to be hoovered up by a multi national, the Stokehouse to destroy views from the Esplanade balcony, Parks Victoria to demolish Brookes Jetty. That’s too much loss in one term of Council.