Preparing Station Pier for a Busy Cruise Season

A busy cruise season is scheduled for 2023-24. The Grand Princess, arriving on 23 October, is the first of 126 scheduled visits compared with 110 visits last season.

Ports Victoria is currently carrying out its annual routine maintenance works on the pier to protect the structure’s heritage and maintain it as a safe shipping and cruise facility. The $10 million works include the ongoing pile rehabilitation program; upgrading the pier deck; maintenance of fire services; refurbishment of the outside of the Gatehouse and testing the mooring bollards.

West Finger Pier is undergoing decking refurbishment. When completed, members of the public will be able to enjoy greater access to this pier.

BCNA Community Dinner - 6th September

The second BCNA community dinner for 2023 is being held on the Wednesday, 6th September. BCNA members have been sent details.

If you would like to attend, please contact the Treasurer to discuss membership and dinner details.

Possible Site for new Primary School

The Victorian Government’s recent State budget announced that a new primary school will open in 2026 with places for up to 650 students in the area.

The school will open for enrolments for students in Prep to Grade 6.

There has been no announcement as to location, but an article in last week’s The Age suggested that the location could be at 509 Williamstown Road. This is land currently owned by Australia Post. However, the City of Port Phillip is also interested in the same area for open space.

The City of Port Phillip’s Housing Strategy

The City of Port Phillip (CoPP) is preparing a new housing strategy. The Victorian Government expects councils to take active steps to plan for growth over a 15-year period. The housing strategy is designed to ensure a range of housing opportunities are available across the municipality. It will also identify suitable locations for housing growth and change.

The CoPP released a Discussion Paper earlier this year. Amongst other things, this paper explained that the CoPP is the most densely populated local area in Victoria. Port Philip has a population density of 5,029 people per square km, compared to 493 people per square km in Greater Melbourne. Almost half of all households (49 per cent) are in rental properties, compared with less than a third (29 per cent) in Greater Melbourne.

When completed, the strategy is designed to guide the CoPP's action for those area that do not have planning controls such as Heritage Overlays, Design and Development Overlays or Neighbourhood Character Overlays. Housing in the Mirvac-planned estate in Beacon Cove is covered by Neighbourhood Character Guidelines and Neighbourhood Character Overlays, so is not in scope for CoPP'sstrategy. However, some nearby areas are. They are the Barak Road public housing area, the Wintringham Hostel area, and the older, non-Mirvac built, homes in the block bounded by Morley, Little Swallow and Swallow Street.

The next step is the release of a draft strategy. Community engagement is expected to occur early in 2024. Details of the project and the Discussion Paper released earlier this year are available here.

103 Beach Street (old Foodstore site) Update

The owners of this site have provided an update to the BCNA. Pile driving to 40 metres has now been completed. The team is currently excavating for one level of basement parking. In a couple of weeks the excavation will finish. Next, trucks will arrive to pour concrete for the basement floor and foundations. Then the walls and higher floors up will be built.

The owners predict that they will get to lockup stage around October. After this the internal fit out occurs, with expected completion in June 2024.

The number of apartments has been reduced - from 22 to 19. Car parking remains at 42. Provision has been made for a small supermarket on the ground floor.

Current Beacon Cove Weather Now on Website

Some of you who have visited the BCNA website recently may have noticed this already, but we now have a display of local temperature and humidity on the top of the second column of the main web page. Directly underneath is a link to a page which has full weather data (including over a year of history) including wind, rainfall, air pressure, solar, and UV.

The weather station is on Pier Street near the water in Beacon Cove so reflects wind speeds and temperatures near the foreshore rather than further inland.

We hope you find this of interest.

Neighbourhood Batteries in Port Melbourne

Since our previous item on this subject we have learned that the City of Port Phillip (CoPP), along with the Cities of Yarra and Melbourne have identified several areas for further assessment.

The areas have been chosen because of their potential to generate high levels of solar energy and use the energy the battery would store. One of the areas chosen is a large area bounded by Beacon Cove and a section of Williamstown Road. The proposed area and other information about batteries can be accessed here.

The CoPP is seeking feedback from residents by 6th August by way of online survey (you've got to scroll to the bottom and click "Next" to start the survey. The CoPP will also be convening local events to hear feedback. We encourage residents to complete the survey and/or attend a local event.

Record Membership

Thank you to members who have renewed their memberships, and to new members who have joined the BCNA in 2022/23. Membership continues to grow and reached 469 at 30 June, a new record for the BCNA. When including the wider community that receive periodic notices from us, our constituent base exceeds 1,000.

The BCNA continues to be active on your behalf in protecting and enhancing the amenity of the area. Feedback received from local and state authorities is that our input is well regarded, being described as organised, sensible, practical, and engaged. Both our last newsletter and posts to our website explain the issues we are involved with on your behalf.

Community Batteries

In partnership with the Victorian Government, the City of Port Phillip (CoPP) is considering introducing neighbourhood batteries to our local area. The ‘Fast Tracking Neighbourhood Batteries’ project runs until mid-2024.

Neighbourhood batteries look like the examples below from Tarneit and North Fitzroy. They are local units designed to store excess solar power from household rooftops for use in the evening.

The CoPP has been exploring locations for neighbourhood batteries and has identified a small number of candidate locations with selection dependent on available land and the status of the local energy grid. At the time of writing, Beacon Cove has not been selected. However, feedback from residents to the BCNA is positive and we will continue to monitor this with CoPP.

The CoPP's Have Your Say page has a good explanation of a neighbourhood battery including Frequently Asked Questions.

Following this initial project, the CoPP intends to develop business cases for implementing Neighbourhood Batteries with further Government support.

Public Toilets in Waterfront Place and the Municipality

The new toilet facilities in Waterfont Place we mentioned in February have been completed. The toilets are located to the left of the road and pedestrian path leading to Station Pier.

Further to this, the City of Port Phillip is consulting on plans to upgrade and improve public toilet facilities across the municipality. They are now seeking community feedback through a Have Your Say survey until July 12th. Comments will then be assessed, and a plan presented to Council in September.