With the loss of the Brandon Park Secondary School, our community liveability, which was taken for granted in the past, is no longer sustainable. Local liveability, ie our people and environment well being, is threatened by the lack of sustainability foresight in current Activity Centre planning and catering for the local amenity and service needs of our present and future communities.
In the process of becoming an Activity Centre, Brandon Park residents are at risk of encountering many community and environment sustainability matters. The current issues that residents face concern:
- The lack of open public space amenities, which were lost when the secondary school was closed.
- Further, the mature trees along Strada Cresent also hold historical sentiments for the City of Monash and have been classified as such by a review undertaken by the State Government and a part of a living local history would be lost if the education department authorised their removal.
- Increasing traffic density in main roads and their impact on local streets in Brandon Park
- The current lack of public amenities for the local elders and young, let alone future amenity and service provisioning to cater for future increasing population and changing life-cycle demographics.
- The unresolved issues of drainage system capacity to contain increasingly frequent local flooding in parts of the neighbourhood
- The current lack of car parking for parents to safely drop off and pick up pre-school and infant children in Collegium Avenue.
In addition to these current public amenity infrastructure issues, Council and State Government are considering to redevelop the area into an Activity Centre that supports high density and affordable dwellings and increase retail activities. The residents are very concerned that such developments would be driven from political and cost saving agendas, resulting in unsustainable high density development that:
- Does not integrate with the existing neighbourhood character desired by residents
- Is not aesthetically designed according to and operating on sustainability standards and forms
- Compromises provision for and design of open space amenities (public and private) and practical accessibility to the shopping centre because developers need to maximise their profits while supporting lower housing prices
- Is not supported by a holistic and long term public amenity and service planning to cater for the changing needs of future population and life-cycle demographics.
Specially, residents are worried the the infill development in the former secondary school would encourage “box” like clustered high density dwellings to be built, resulting in an inward structured development that does not integrate with the existing neighbourhood character.
The residents of Brandon Park envisage that Council would engage and collaborate with them to explore and agree viable resolutions to current issues and ensuring future infill development in the former school site will
- Be based on high standards of sustainability in design aesthetics and operating forms, and
- Enhance and sustain community liveability in Brandon Park.
Oct 2009 Update – Unresolved Environment Issues of Community Concern:
To result in sustainable outcomes, the Brandon Park Activity Centre planning needs to address the following local environmental issues -
- Drainage – currently residents to the east and south of the site have had numerous episodes of flooding and they are concerned if they lose the absorption ability of the open land this problem will be exacerbated.
- Traffic – currently the local roads carry far more traffic than they were designed for and if a concentration of development was to occur on the land without thought to traffic management, the problem of traffic pollution will increase over the current unacceptable limits. As mentioned previously, the BP area is surrounded by major roads with heavy use for most of the day and due to the concentration of traffic lights there is pollution from idling vehicles.
- Open Space – there is limited open space proposed in the first draft of the Structure Plan, yet concentrated housing is proposed for the BP site. Where does the government and council believe that the increased number of residents will be able to exercise and their children to play. We are continually reminded by government that obesity is an issue and that exercise is critical, yet this does not appear to be a high priority in these proposed development proposals.
- Safety – Due to a lack of parking the BP Pre-school and Infant Welfare Centre (located in Collegium Avenue) have to rely on roadside parking in Collegium Avenue. Already Collegium Avenue carries a high traffic load and any development on the former school site will add to this problem. The Structure Plan does not address this concern of no parking for the two centres.
The consequences of these environment issues also create local community liveability and social integration issues notably –
- Risk of more local flooding as more people are being put in lesser space in an area already affected by occasional flooding that is increasingly happening in more severe rain and storm weathers
- Increasing traffic pollution aka carbon emission
- Noise pollution due to the heavy vehicles using Ferntree Gully Road for access to the Mulgrave Freeway, especially at night when they use air brakes to stop as traffic lights.
- “Rat-run” by traffic thru local streets to avoid the delays on Ferntree Gully Road & Wellington Road
- Lack of functional open space & outdoor recreational amenities for the area if the BP school site is over-developed and incapable of providing for continuously changing population lifecycle and varying demographic needs.
- Cross ethnics integration – presently the aged to young people do not have a community centre that caters to meet their social and recreation needs. Residents are also reluctant to cross Ferntree Gully road (because of high traffic safety risks) to use the present amenities, which will not be sufficient for a continuing and growing population living in mixed and compact density environments that will result from the activity centre development. As a result:
- Brandon Park had become the de facto meeting venue for different ethnic groups, especially the older and newer migrant generations from Greece, Italy, Malta, India, China and other parts of Asia & Africa.
- Families with young children presently using whatever open space in the closed secondary school area is accessible, will lose access to these already compromised amenities.
- The teenage and young adults, including many overseas students have not access to local open space amenities that meet their needs. Without local sporting, exercise and recreation amenities that are appropriate for youths, the risk of youth restlessness and boredom can lead to many social problems already facing CBD and suburbs with increasing populations of overseas students and new migrant residents.
These issues have been communicated to Council in written forms and meeting discussions.
Sept 2010 Status
Slacking Structure Plan Update
To date, there is no update to the absolete draft structural plan, despite improvement updates of State Government’s structure planning approaches and tools. We consulted Council planners, who did not conveyed if and when the Brandon Park structural plan would be updated.
Lacking Community Strengthening Support
We also have been excluded in Council activities in accessing DPCD grants in community strengthening. Ironically, Brandon Park residents have excluded from the Mulgrave community Strengthening Project, which our Council sought successfully achieve a $35,000 DPCD grant funding for strengthening the Mulgave community. The money is planned to be spent on recruiting a part-time officer for the Wellignton Reserve Community Centre to work with Mulgrave residents “interested in becoming community volunteers and provide training in relevant computer skills and various consultation methodologies”, as part of Council’s seeking to “better help Mulgrave residents with access to more services”.
