In July, Plan Melbourne introduced three new flavours of residential zone. Loosely described, the Neighbourhood Residential Zone (NRZ) will prevent medium or high density developments in order to preserve character, the General Residential Zone (GRZ) is pretty much business as usual with a small nod to developers, and the Residential Growth Zone (RGZ) is where apartment blocks will be allowed to blossom. Well blossom as much as they can within a 13.5m height restriction. The new zones are meant to provide more certainty to residents and developers.
23.11.14 in planning
That’s the subtitle of a new documentary to be previewed at Melbourne’s ACMI on August 10th, Real Estate for Ran$om. Looking into the economics of property speculation, the film’s researchers uncovered a little secret. While the REIV’s housing vacancy rate for Melbourne stands at 1.7%, the “speculative” vacancy rate, which includes housing not for rent, is 4.94%. That’s 46,220 of the 935,305 properties for which they inspected water bills – a tell tale sign of whether a house is occupied.
25.07.11 in planning real-estate
Big News has covered the email schemozzle to death, so I thought I’d leave it to them. But I can’t resist this screenshot from ABC TV. Masterful composition. Here is an isolated Madden looking more like Jim Hacker than he would probably like. He had just gate-crashed his way into a very important inquiry into his own department’s pants-down on public consultation. The other lads appear to be leaving him out of their chat. But what on earth has that guy on the right drawn? A legless pelvis? In confident strokes. Great work for a pollie.
13.03.10 in planning weird-wonderful
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An Albert Park resident is having the usual problems trying to demolish his “bog standard” deco house, and has gone to the press with it as consultant fees top 150K. “When we’ve put extensions to [the council] previously they said they didn’t like architecture that mimicked previous periods… Then we bring in a contemporary design and they say it introduces new elements. I thought they were a bunch of megalomaniac tossers.”
Denton Corker Marshall is working with the Halim Group on a design for a 15 storey tower behind the historic Windsor Hotel. The tower will reportedly wipe out part of the Hard Rock Cafe – no great loss there. But the National Trust isn’t happy – CEO Martin Purslow saying, “This proposal is over twice the statutory height limit under Melbourne’s planning scheme. It says the statutory height limit is to preserve the scale of the Bourke Hill precinct, and that’s the bloody reason we have these limits.”
A two week public hearing starts next week into the fate of several sites very close to Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance.