Queen Victoria Market redevelopment: the best Melbourne has seen for 25 years

This month I unveiled council’s plans for Australia’s most socially, environmentally and financially sustainable mixed-use development on the council-owned Munro site as part the Queen Victoria Market precinct renewal.

I am very proud of those plans: it is the best proposed development our city has seen in 25 years.

The proposed development by PDG Corporation will deliver a $89.7 million public benefit to the City North precinct.

It ticks all the boxes: architectural excellence, quality apartment design, 56 affordable housing units, a 120 place childcare facility, a maternal, child health and family services centre, a community centre and kitchen, artists spaces and city room gallery, a hotel, five-star sustainability rating and generous setbacks.

It will also include car parking for market customers. It means the current car park at QVM, which is Melbourne’s oldest cemetery, can be returned to public open space. The Munro site is adjacent to QVM, which is about to undergo significant renewal as part of Council’s most ambitious project to date; the largest market renewal project in the world right now.

The City of Melbourne purchased the Munro site in 2015 to inoculate against inappropriate development right next to the market and to ensure a major supermarket or fast food chain didn’t move in there, in direct competition to QVM.

The public-private model we are using is markedly different to most: our land will be used to benefit the public, rather than repaying a private partner in interest.

Our proposal has a 15:1 plot ratio, well under the 18:1 ratio permitted for CBD developments under existing planning rules. We predict construction on this development alone will create about 5000 jobs, as well as thousands more when the development is complete and operational.

Rather than build the maximum number of apartments allowed on the site, the design of high quality residential apartments is an exemplar of the Better Apartments design standards. The developer has reported that demand for the apartments within the development has already exceeded the proposed number of available dwellings.

The Victorian government recently announced 17 new suburbs in outer Melbourne which will deliver 100 affordable housing units. By comparison, this development alone will deliver 56.

The Victorian Planning Panel’s report on the area stated: “The panel is satisfied that the inclusion of City North as part of the expanded central city means that QVM (and its surrounds) is now very much an integral part of the central city, rather than on the edge of the city.

“The panel is also satisfied that planning policy at both the state and local level support significant intensification of development broadly in the Hoddle grid and the expanded central city.”

The Munro development will stimulate economic uplift in the area and have a positive impact on property values, with the wider QVM Renewal Project projected to generate a net additional 7000 dwellings in the market core area over a 20 year period compared to business as usual. This equates to 438 additional dwellings per year.

SGS Economics and Planning found that the QVM Renewal Project will deliver a net community benefit of $1.2 billion, with a benefit to cost ratio of 6:1.

We look forward to working with the Victorian Government to progress this exemplary development.

• The City of Melbourne is awaiting the planning minister’s approval on the planning scheme amendment, which would facilitate this development and the broader QVM renewal project. After the amendment is gazetted, PDG Corporation will lodge the development application with the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP).

Melbourne lord mayor Robert Doyle is a regular Domain columnist. His fee for this article will be donated to the White Ribbon Foundation.