Not a great year for heritage advocates in Victoria – funding cuts to adviser services, a plan for Melbourne with no plan for heritage, vandalism at the the Palace Theatre that took us back to the 1970s, two Supreme Court matters challenging heritage listings, historic areas of national parks traded away on the back of wobbly business plans, Mt Buffalo Chalet permitted to be 40%  demolished in the absence of any business plan,  innumerable heritage backflips at Gough Whitlam’s birthplace, and still no action for Flinders Street Station administration building.

The Palace Theatre

This has been a huge issue for the Trust, assisting the #SavethePalace group and our colleagues at Melbourne Heritage Action. #SavethePalace has worked tirelessly on the campaign and with social media and lobbying City of Melbourne councillors. Interim mandatory height controls were introduced by Minister Guy in June 2014 and immediately impacted the proposed hotel design but the building itself has been under constant threat of demolition since acquisition by Jinshan Investments in late 2013.

A nomination for the interior of the Palace Theatre to Heritage Victoria was rejected in late 2013. In late 2014 the City of Melbourne reviewed the heritage controls for the site (currently external-only as part of a heritage precinct and ‘D’ rated) and started the process to apply an individual heritage control. Following a wanton (although not illegal) act of vandalism to destroy internal decorative features including plasterwork and tiles from several periods,  the City of Melbourne backed away from pursuing internal heritage controls.  Ultimately the Council failed to determine the application within 60 days and the developers lodged an appeal with VCAT. The preliminary matters will be heard in mid January with a full hearing commencing in March 2015.

Heritage at the Supreme Court

1) The former Cooperative Warehouse no.5 (1956) in Kensington became the focus of a major case  in interpretation of the requirement to consider economic issues in preparation of a planning scheme amendment. The outcome will have significant ramifications on future amendments. The warehouse is subject to an interim heritage overlay control and was reviewed by the City of Melbourne Amendment c207 (Arden Macaulay) Planning Panel for a permanent heritage control. We appeared at that panel with an expert and specifically addressed this building. The heritage significance was not disputed by the owners at the panel, however they issued a Supreme Court writ against the Planning Minister seeking to overturn the control on the basis that economic considerations were not properly accounted for.

2) In a parallel case, the owners of Total House, 170 Russell Street Melbourne (1965) want to demolish the building and replace it with a tower.  In July 2014 the owners lodged a Supreme Court writ claiming that the Heritage Council had erred in its application of the Heritage Act in deciding in May 2014 to add Total House (office building, carpark and basement music venue formerly known as ‘’Billboard’’) to the Victorian Heritage Register. The Heritage Act principle being challenged is the well established two stage process of separating out economic factors between registration decisions and permit decisions.  Economic considerations are reserved for the permit process.  Both the application of the Heritage Act and the place of post-war modernism in heritage assessment are therefore at stake in this Supreme Court appeal.  The appeal will be heard in April and the Trust is preparing a case to support the Heritage Council in this unprecedented attack on heritage legislation in Victoria.

3) Meanwhile the City of Boroondara has continued its fight over demolition of 1045 Bourke Road to the Court of Appeal following defeat at the Supreme Court in March. As Maddocks Lawyers report:

the case will stand for the proposition that where a permit is required to demolish a building under the Heritage Overlay and other aspects of the proposal also require planning permission, discretion to allow demolition may be exercised by reference to considerations beyond those relating to heritage conservation policy. 

Should the Court of Appeal matter be unsuccessful the implications for Councils go beyond pure heritage considerations, but will nonetheless make the defence of places against demolition that much more difficult.

Bourke Hill Heritage Review

In June 2014 Planning Minister Matthew Guy gazetted Melbourne Planning Scheme Amendment C237 to introduce interim mandatory height controls at the existing limits of 15m, 23m and 60m in the Bourke Hill Precinct.  We welcomed Minister Guy’s announcement – predicated on one of the few heritage-related directions contained in Plan Melbourne –  as a huge step towards certainty in protecting the low-rise heritage precinct around Parliament.  This was a key historical moment in the consideration of height controls in the CBD, after a false start by the City in 2011 when a major strategic review of height controls was abandoned.

The Minister’s permanent controls were exhibited later in 2014, and proposed to slightly expand the heritage precinct as well as make many of the discretionary controls mandatory, and vary some of the existing height limits. A number of property owners are vigorously resisting the proposed controls and an independent Planning Panel will sit in February 2015 for two weeks to review submissions.

Plan Melbourne

In December 2013, we made a submission on Plan Melbourne, the draft Metropolitan Planning Strategy.  With the city’s population set to double by 2060, Victoria could scarcely afford for Metropolitan Planning Strategy to be an aspirational document.  In heritage terms, the final document was desperately disappointing, with scant reference to integration of heritage into planning of Melbourne.

East-West Link

In December 2013 along with numerous other parties we made a submission to the East-West Link Assessment Committee appointed to evaluate the Comprehensive Impact Statement.  The considerable impacts on Royal Park and other heritage precincts would have amounted to one of the most heritage-adverse projects to affect Melbourne in decades.

The subsequent addition of Royal Park to the Victorian Heritage Register was a spurious arrangement that provided all the permit exemptions required for the East-West Link project. A legal challenge was under consideration by several parties but was negated by the change of government and decision to abandon the project. We expect to see the new government amend the gazettal of Royal Park to remove all the permit exemptions relating to the abandoned project.

Heritage Adviser funding cuts

In July 2014 the Department of Transport, Planning, Local Infrastructure removed dedicated Heritage Advisory Services funding support from local government. State government support is essential for a service that has been the backbone of the local heritage planning system for 30 years. Whilst regional and rural Councils can apply for funding support from “The Regional Flying Squad” – a group of departmental planners that assist regional and rural Councils with strategic planning implementation issues – it means that metropolitan councils are ineligible for any heritage advisory support funding. The metropolitan Councils that particularly need assistance are the metro-fringe Councils experiencing high growth and infrastructure building programs.

Gough Whitlam House, Kew

In October there was a blizzard of claims and counter-claims between Boroondara Council and the former Minister for Planning, Matthew Guy about responsibility for protecting Gough Whitlam’s birthplace. It was an incredible coincidence that the house was due to be demolished the day Gough passed away. The net result was that (what is now left of) 46 Rowland Street Kew is, temporarily at least, on the Victorian Heritage Register and enjoys a high level of protection. But that might not be permanent, because in late December the Executive Director Heritage Victoria recommended that the place not go on the register. This has been the most bizarre sequence of events around the fate of a putatively significant property that we can recall in many years. It is almost inevitable that there will be a public hearing next year to sort this mess out once and for all.

Melbourne’s Marvellous Modernism

The fallout from the refusal of the previous Minister for Planning to add nine post-war places to the heritage overlay of the City of Melbourne continued and the fight is now well and truly on for our post-war heritage. Whilst the former Hoyt’s Cinema Complex in Bourke St made it onto the Victorian Heritage Register, Total House is now at the Supreme Court. Our work with our Built Environment Advisory Committee over the last year has culminated in a comparative study document of post-war modernist buildings in the Melbourne CBD which we launched this at the Urban Heritage Conference at University of Melbourne in September. It will underpin further urgent advocacy work in 2015.

Mount Buffalo Chalet

In February 2014 we were dumbfounded when Heritage Victoria approved a permit for the demolition of 40% of the Chalet to facilitate the desire by Parks Victoria to “clean up” the place and to “restore” the Chalet to its “former glory.” The place has been closed following the bush fires of 2007. In its search to attract future redevelopment to the site, the state government has allocated $7.5 million to restore the front Chalet building, establish a day visitor centre and it has extended the lease on the property to up to 99 years. But we submitted to Heritage Victoria the importance of not allowing demolition to be allowed where there is no master plan or identified future use.

Queen Victoria Market

The City released its broad schematic vision for the site – based around an underground carpark, landscaping/park for the existing carpark and a new development separated by an extension of Franklin Street with residential towers at the south end –  and then promptly purchased the Munro site in October, with Lord Mayor Robert Doyle publicly contemplating abandoning underground parking at the north end of the market, thus throwing another development-revision cat amongst the traders’ and community’s pigeons.  The creation of a road and tower redevelopment at the south end of the site remain particularly contentious propositions.

Point Nepean Quarantine Station

The former state government quietly rushed through on the last day before caretaker mode a 50-year lease with conditions for a luxury resort.  Our primary concern is that the proposition is on the basis of untested geothermal access and that whilst the proponent is confident, there does not appear a fall-back position to guarantee financial viability in the event that a geothermal resource is not economically sustainable.  The risk is that the site will consequently be locked-up in complex leasing, sub-leasing or on-selling of the lease and simultaneous dispute resolutions.  Conditions have been imposed to partly deal with these issues, but the extent of the lease is still unclear.

Beechworth and Shire of Indigo

Indigo Shire learned its lesson from several controversial decisions by Heritage Victoria over the last few years. The subdivision and redevelopment controversies of the Beechworth Gaol (approved by Heritage Victoria several years ago), and a large new colorbond shed approved by Heritage Victoria behind Tanswells Hotel which caused an almighty fuore in 2014 led to the Shire in late 2014 commissioning its own comprehensive review of heritage, including the role of the Shire and Heritage Victoria in decision-making. The Panel appointed by the Shire heard numerous submissions and will report in early 2015.

In the meantime Heritage Victoria made a much better job of the permit conditions relating to the subdivision of the former Mayday Hills site (and is now busily reviewing the registrations of several other key sites in Beechworth). Earlier in 2014 an urgent planning amendment facilitated the transfer of Mayday Hills from Latrobe University to private use. The site has one of the best collections of trees in Victoria and the Shire has agreed to include the sites 170 trees included on the National Trust Register of Significant Trees as a statutory decision guideline.

Flinders Street Station

Nothing happened! No promises, no action, no intent. The repair bill is getting bigger every hour. The opportunity costs of deferral of any action is getting bigger every day.