Robur Tea House Decision Rejects Development Plan

May 2023

On 31 May Heritage Victoria (HV) rejected the application to surround the historic Robur Tea House with a 25 story hotel and a range of other retail and commercial buildings. HV was clearly unimpressed by the proposal. In explaining its decision, HV’s Executive Director noted that the development would have a substantial adverse visual and physical impact and significantly harm the site’s cultural heritage.

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Inquiry into Heritage Protection in Victoria

April 2023

The RHSV is concerned that there has been a serious decline in the protection afforded to heritage buildings by local planning legislation in Victoria, and as a result an alarming loss of heritage in recent years. There is an urgent need for fundamental reform of the Victorian Planning Framework. In October 2020 a positive step in this direction was taken when the upper house of the Victorian Parliament initiated an inquiry into Victoria’s planning regulations with respect to heritage protection. RHSV welcomed this as an opportunity for positive reform. The parliamentary committee conducting this inquiry received over 280 submissions from a variety of stakeholders, including an extensive one from the RHSV, but held no public hearings. On 2 August 2022 the committee released a report. Its central recommendation was that, after the forthcoming State elections, which were due in November 2022, the Victorian Government should hold a full inquiry into the adequacy of the protections afforded by the Victorian Planning Framework. In the lead- up to the State elections, the RHSV ran a campaign urging people who cared about our heritage to seek a pledge from their upper house candidates that, if elected, they would support having this inquiry restarted.

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2022 Victorian Election Campaign

Preservation Win for Historic Railway Shed

January 2023

The Number 2 Goods Shed in Docklands, near Southern Cross Station is one of the most significant buildings in Victoria’s rail and industrial history. Built in 1889, it is the largest and most architecturally elaborate nineteenth century railway goods building in Victoria. Despite its listing on the Victorian Heritage Register, in the early 2000s it was cut in half when Collins Street was extended into Docklands, and the two halves redeveloped as office spaces. In 2022 a developer applied to Heritage Victoria for a permit to demolish more of the shed in order to build two substantial office towers where the sheds are cut by the Collins Street extension. Fortunately the application was refused.

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Historic John Curtin Hotel Saved

January 2023

The combination of community concern, opposition from heritage organisations, concerted trade union action, and now a 10 year contract with the management of the John Curtin Hotel has saved the historic pub from the threat of redevelopment. The contract, announced in November, means that the Curtin will continue as a pub and long-standing music venue.

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Richmond’s Jack Dyer Stand Lost

January 2023

The battle to save Richmond’s historic Jack Dyer Stand at the Punt Road Oval has been lost. The City of Melbourne approved a controversial plan to knock down the stand as part of a redevelopment of the oval despite many heritage groups fighting to save the stand.

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Threats to World Heritage Area: Gertrude Street, Fitzroy

September 2022

Number 1-9 Gertrude Street is currently occupied by a two-story chocolate brick 1974 office and warehouse, which at best could be described as functional. Redevelopment of the site therefore could be positive, but the building being proposed is significantly larger than the one it replaces. It is monolithic bordering on brutalist, and at odds with the largely intact Victorian buildings beside and opposite it. It will be substantially higher than any buildings in the immediate area other than St. Vincent’s Hospital and one other narrow structure, and will loom over the historic Royal Terraces nearby on Nicholson Street. It is, in other words, unsympathetic to its immediate surrounds and to the historic buildings nearby.

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Added Protection for Heritage Buildings in the CBD ( C387)

September 2022

On 9 September 2022, the Minister for Planning approved a Planning Amendment that extends heritage protection to 121 individual buildings and five precincts in Melbourne’s central business district. These include not only buildings from the Victorian and Edwardian era (that is, pre-1914) but also Art Deco buildings from the 1930s, and Modernist buildings from the post-war period (1945 to 1975). This is a major win, and while it does not offer absolute protection, it means that these historic buildings will have a better chance of preservation.

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Interim Protection Order for Victory House

September 2022

The RHSV joined the fight to prevent demolition of Victory House, Geelong Road, Canadian. This 1906 cottage was built by James Wong Chung, who named it after the winner of the 1902 Melbourne Cup, ’The Victory’. His family lived there until 2008 and during this time it had a central role for Ballarat’s Chinese Community. It is therefore an extremely important part of Ballarat’s heritage.

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Major Win for World Heritage Site

July 2022

The RHSV congratulates the Minister for Planning, the Honourable Lizzie Blandthorn MP on her decision to extend the protected area around the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens World Heritage Site. This important site was the first in Australia to be awarded UNESCO World Heritage status. The RHSV has for a number of years been seeking to ensure that the Royal Exhibition Building and its surrounding area are properly protected from inappropriate developments. This decision represents a major step forward in our campaign to implement better protection for Melbourne’s only World Heritage Site.

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Great Western Hotel: Another (Real) Pub Bites the Dust

July 2022 

With planning approval having been granted on 27 May this year, the threat of demolition that has been hanging over the Great Western Hotel in King Street since 2017 is now a reality.

The Great Western opened in 1864 as the Star of the West and operated as a hotel continuously until it closed in March 2017. Granting approval for the planned redevelopment of the site condemns the Great Western to joining the long list of historic pubs, including the Stork and the Corkman Hotels, lost to Melbourne.

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More High Rise for the Queen Victoria Market Precinct

June 2022

The City of Melbourne is pressing ahead with plans for ‘renewal’ of the market and for high rise in the precinct surrounding it. Both developments will further erode the heritage character of the market and its traditional mode of operation.

The Council is proceeding with two new buildings on or abutting Queen Street, Trader Shed and Northern Shed, which are at odds with the market’s scale and character. And in the market precinct, just to the south of the market, the Council reversed its strategy of protecting the heritage warehouses that serviced the market and sold the property to developers. Council have just approved another multi-story building adding to the twin 10 and 38 storey towers already under construction.

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Historic Ringwood Shop Saved

May 2022

Congratulations to Ringwood & District Historical Society (RDHS) in leading a successful campaign to save from demolition a local landmark, the 1914 Blood Brothers Store.

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Protection for Industrial Heritage in Fishermans Bend

May 2022

RHSV is concerned that the historical significance of an important industrial heritage site in Fishermans Bend could be lost when a planned new development by the University of Melbourne goes ahead. The former General Motors Holden complex was where Australia’s own car, the Holden, was designed and produced. This is an iconic site whose historical significance is evidenced by the fact that it was recommended for listing on the Victorian Heritage Register. In 2018 the site was purchased by the University of Melbourne that plans to develop it as a new engineering and architecture campus – a development that will involve towers 140 meters high in an area with an 80 meters recommended height limit. In August 2021 the Victorian Minister for Planning determined that a few significant buildings on the site would be protected by being listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, while the rest will be demolished and replaced by the University’s new modern high-rise campus complex.

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Demolition of Historic Brickworks Buildings

March 2022 

The RHSV has objected to the demolition of two heritage industrial buildings on the former Hoffman’s Brickworks site in Brunswick. Despite agreements to conserve these buildings, the developer allowed them to decay so that it could be argued that they should be demolished. When the company first began developing the site in the 1990s, it received a heritage permit that stipulated it must carry out conservation work before the rest of the site was developed. Instead the developer, Sungrove Corporation, has largely ignored these requirements and allowed heritage buildings to decay while they developed apartment blocks and townhouses on the rest of the site. This has allowed them to successfully argue that the two remaining heritage buildings on the site should be demolished, leaving it free to build a multi-storey residential and commercial building on the footprint of the demolished buildings.

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Historic Industrial Complex in Richmond

February 2022           

The RHSV is concerned that an historic industrial area in Richmond associated with Australia’s history as a major wool producer is threatened with more intense development that could undermine its heritage value. The area between Tanner Street and the Richmond railway station contains an extraordinary collection of multi-storied former textile mills, built in the early twentieth century, that have a significant history linked to Australia’s wool industry. Most have been converted into apartments or offices. Proposed amendments to the City of Yarra’s planning regulations would mean that the area would be subjected to further intensive development that would put its heritage values at risk. However this proposed extension is now being reconsidered.

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Threats to World Heritage Area: Aitkenhead Building 

November 2021

St Vincent’s Hospital has been granted permission to construct a new building adjacent to the Carlton Gardens and the historically important Royal Exhibition Building, which would negatively impact on that historically important site and the surrounding area of South Fitzroy. The eleven-storey 1950s-era Aikenhead Building on the corner of Victoria Parade and Nicholson Street will be demolished, and the historic Brenan Hall next to it partly demolished. These will be replaced by a larger building, 15 metres taller than the Aikenhead Building and faced with reflective glass. Because of its increased height, bulk and reflective appearance this will have a seriously negative impact on the World Heritage Site and its surrounding area, as well as on the adjacent South Fitzroy Heritage Precinct.

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Former Sunshine Technical School Buildings

February 2020

A recent significant win for heritage protection has meant that several stylish ‘streamline moderne’ buildings constructed in the early 1940s will be preserved. These were constructed at the Sunshine Technical School in Melbourne’s western suburbs. The school was closed some years ago. In August 2021 a notice appeared on the site announcing that the Department of Education was calling for tenders for the demolition of the buildings. The Department is exempt from planning and heritage laws but is expected to consult with the community. When made aware of this, the local historical society, the Brimbank City Council and the RHSV sprang into action opposing the demolition. In the face of this public response the Department of Education has said that it is now not planning to demolish the buildings.

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