Innovatia

The City Square This was a project similar to Tyne Elgin but on a grander scale that involved a land swap by the city. This allowed for the building of a hotel and residential development that provided ac- tive frontages and passive surveillance of the square, a new laneway, 400 underground short- stay parking spaces, a new, softer City Square and the refurbishment of the historic Regent Theatre. QV Melbourne With the success of the three aforementioned projects, the city became more ambitious. In 2000, following expressions of concern about the proposed development on the Queen Victo- ria Hospital site in Swanston Street, the city pur- chased the site from the Nauru government for $35 million. It then packaged a brief that required the developers to provide an underground su- permarket to support the city’s rapidly increas- ing residential population, 2000 shortstay park- ing spaces to help the retailers and hospitality area of Chinatown, lanes and arcades with small tenancies and complete active frontage, and a childcare facility. It also required that the de- velopment should not be designed by a single architect but rather be a campus-style develop- ment with multiple hands involved. The result was the QV development, which helped reverse declining retail in the CBD. The city returned a modest profit of $3.5m from interest, earned by leaving its money in the development while re- taining the land title until practical completion. QVM Precinct Renewal The most recent example, currently un- der construction, is the Munro site in Therry

JH Boyd School The Munro model has been repeated at the for- mer JH Boyd School in Southbank, where the city purchased the site for $10.5m, built in a li- brary for $7m and an open space for $4m, selling off a small parcel of land to a developer on the requirement that it provide 15 per cent afforda- ble housing and 1000 square metres of commu- nity space, all at a 6-Star Green Star rating. The price paid by the developer paid off all the previ- ous investments and left the city with a residual site value of $23m. Postcode 3000 Arguably the most successful PPP carried out by the city was Postcode 3000. The program saw the inner city increase its number of resi- dential units from 650 in 1985 to nearly 50,000

Street opposite the Queen Victoria Market. This forms part of a larger precinct and the QVM Precinct Renewal, but it is a crucial site. It will allow the city to remove surface-level car- parking and shift parking underground, thus allowing for the creation of a circa 1.75-hec- tare Market Square. It also allows the city to support retail at the market and avoid the in- troduction of a supermarket and chain stores. The successful developer is providing 15 per cent affordable housing, building community facilities, including 120-space childcare, and providing lanes and open space. A safeguard built in for the city was that the developer was required to build the 500- space carpark and the community facilities before gaining title. The best way to explain the public benefit is in the waterfall chart below.

today, so producing the single-biggest change to the central city since the gold rush. The se- cret to these kinds of projects is that councils need to retain the in-house expertise that al- lows them to conceive of projects and then have the skills to negotiate and manage the risk of delivery. The City of Melbourne has done this for 30 years, and its communities continue to benefit from these actions while its credibili- ty within private enterprise remains high. Rob Adams is an architect and urban designer, and Director of City Design at the City of Mel- bourne, Australia. He won multiple awards as the leader of the revitalisation of the Melbourne City Centre and surrounds, helping to create a vibrant city streetscape with innovative design features.

Aerial photograph of Queen Victoria Market By Bob T - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org

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