By CAMERON LUCADOUWELLS
THE overseers of the ambitious Revitalising Central Dandenong project envisage a bright future for the precinct.
Greater Dandenong Business managers Paul Kearsley and Kevin Van Boxtel took the Journal on a walking tour among the transformed streets.
“CRANES on the horizon” – that’s how Greater Dandenong Business general manager Paul Kearsley gauges central Dandenong’s expected economic rebound.
Recently, cranes have been busy bringing shape to the council’s $62milllion municipal building/ library/ civic square colossus.
Across the road, the completed eight-storey Government Services Office building is a taste of what Mr Kearsley and the council’s Revitalising Central Dandenong manager Kevin Van Boxtel hope will be a tall-scale streetscape in the CBD.
Mr Kearsley compares the modernist tax office building in Mason Street to the less predictably shaped new GSO building – Dandenong’s sophisticated future will look more like the latter.
As these buildings sprout, so too would it mark a revival in fortunes for the central business district – historically a thriving shopping district built around its iconic market and stockyards.
Its commercial heydays in the 1960s and ’70s slumped into “turbulent” times after big-industry closures such as GM Holden, Heinz and International Harvesters, Mr Kearsley said.
Lonsdale Street has been radically transformed as part of Revitalising Central Dandenong works – $290 million from the State Government.
It is complemented by the council’s under-construction civic centre project which is due for completion in March next year, one that will give Dandenong its first public square.
Mr Kearsley said it’s now the turn of private investors to complete the jigsaw, to fill the empty sites north of the railway station.
More than $500 million in investment is hoped to follow in the next 13 years, as well as 4000 dwellings and 5000 jobs.
The most recent building proposal is for seven-storey offices housing the Australian Tax Office on the corner of Walker Street and Halpin Way.
Halpin Way meanwhile cuts a swathe from the civic centre past Little India – an overdue, easy-to-navigate walkway between the centre of Dandenong and the railway station.
It adjoins Australia’s first co-generation plant – a gas turbine producing electricity for the precinct’s occupiers.
Mr Kearsley expects further high-rise apartments and offices in the CBD will bring residents and workers into the precinct, helping to restart stalling trade in Little India and other CBD districts.
“It’s often a question of getting the finance to build (developments).
“The interest is there from the private market,” Mr Kearsley said.
“The future is getting people to live around this centre to support retail, restaurants and the (Dandenong) market.
“Then we’ll see the change in retailing in Lonsdale Street.”
He points to the vacant hoarded site, which will be the future tax office home.
“You’ll see the cranes here mid next year and then at the sites after that.
“People will continue to see this activity and you’ll see the development industry get interested.”
