By CASEY NEILL
IT’S 20 years since Springvale and Dandenong became the City of Greater Dandenong.
A new civic precinct in Dandenong has been touted for almost as long.
Mayor Jim Memeti joined council in late 2005 and soon found himself on an annual councillor weekend retreat.
“And the first subject that I was in discussions with was about a new building in Dandenong,” he said.
“Every year since then, we had the same thing at the annual retreat.
“It never got off the ground, it just stopped every year.
“Some of the older councillors told me ’This has been happening since 1997’.”
Cr Memeti was elected mayor in 2010.
“When I won the vote count in the chamber, I stood up and said ’by the end of my term I’d like the council to make a decision on a new civic building in Dandenong’,” he said.
“The following Monday, I went into (CEO John Bennie’s) office and said, ’I’ve said this now – what are we going to do about it?’.”
Revitalising Central Dandenong manager VicUrban, now Places Victoria, had offered the council the Lonsdale and Walker streets site.
So Cr Memeti, Mr Bennie and corporate services director Mick Jaensch met and discussed their options.
“Mick went back and did all his homework and came back and said ’yep, we can do it’,” he said.
“Before the end of my term, we signed a memorandum of understanding that this was the site that this council building was going to be built on.
“I stuck my neck out and said all that at the council meeting, and was very fortunate that with the hard work from John Bennie and Mick Jaensch and the support from all the councillors, that we were able to sign a memorandum of understanding before the end of my term.”
Cr Memeti was lucky enough to be elected mayor again in time for the building’s opening.
“The council is owned by the community. It’s their building. It’s a building for the community,” he said.
“It’s somewhere they can come and it’s free. It belongs to the people.”
He said the building was more energy efficient, eliminated a costly maintenance bill for the ageing Springvale and Dandenong sites, and increased staff efficiency.
“We’ll save probably a million dollars just on efficiencies of having everyone in the one building. And they’re so happy now that they can just wander up the hall,” he said.
“That means we can do other things with the money.
“It goes back into the community.”
Cr Memeti has dubbed the space ’Opportunity Square’ but the council will turn to the community before officially naming it.
“We’re the City of Opportunity, so it wasn’t that hard to come up with,” he said.
“But everybody’s got the opportunity to suggest a name. We don’t want it really named after a person or a country.
“It has to be something that’s going to be for everybody.”
There’ll be a competition with strict criteria and plenty of consultation.
“Hopefully, it will get people talking around their dining table at home,” Cr Memeti said.
