By CASEY NEILL
PLANS to sell more land to Minaret College have City of Greater Dandenong councillors divided over open space and kinder places.
They last Tuesday, by seven to four, they voted to ask for public comment on selling 75A Whitworth Avenue, Springvale, to the school for $1.150 million.
The council leases a dilapidated kindergarten on the land, abutting Glendale Reserve, to Minaret and the Scout Association uses a second building for storage.
But Minaret can end its lease this year and has indicated it intends to do so, leaving the kinder vacant.
So last May council officers asked the college if it wanted to purchase the site and use it to provide an expanded kindergarten service – up from 52 children to more than 100.
But community services director Mark Doubleday said current kinder services were meeting demand and would continue to.
There are more than 40 free places, he said, and this will increase by 67 when the Sandown Kindergarten relocates to Springvale Rise Primary School’s heights campus this year – a 14-minute walk from Minaret, across Springvale Road.
But Cr Jim Memeti said there was a need for more places.
“I believe there are kids in this area that will miss out,” he said.
“People won’t cross Springvale Road to take the children to kinder.”
Acting planning, design and amenity director Peter Shelton said council policy required 4.5 hectares of open space per 1000 residents, and this area offered just 1.4 hectares.
Cr Matthew Kirwan said Glendale Reserve was the only park in this part of Springvale, and it was very busy when he visited about 8pm on Sunday 14 December.
“I reflected that night that if the dilapidated scout hall and kindergarten were not there how this would be a bigger and better park for this community, particularly as the density of housing increases in this area over time,” he said.
Cr Kirwan questioned whether Minaret College needed the land.
“They already own land where they can build their own kindergarten and they told me last week they would use it if they have to,” he said.
He also said that only eight non-Minaret students used the current kindergarten, which Cr Youhorn Chea said was in poor condition.
“If it didn’t sell, we would need to spend money to build a new kinder,” he said.
But Cr Angela Long, who grew up in Wentworth Avenue, said the kinder should not be rebuilt but instead demolished to make more open space.
“That’s what the residents in that street want,” she said.
“There’s not a lot of that park left.
“I believe they have a right to this open space.”
Cr Angela Long said many students who attended the school and kindergarten didn’t live in the area, so were brought in on 27 busses each day.
“It would get worse with more kids,” she said.
Jean Harris has lived in the street since 1951 and said the school had “already taken half the park and fenced it off“.
“We used to have lots of people coming to play sport on the land,” she said.
Ms Harris said the park was part of a 300-house war service area.
“The war service made that park for us,” she said.
She helped to raise funds for the kinder and opened it as committee president in 1966.
“It’s quite an old building, but it’s not the point of the building,” she said.
“That’s part of the park.
“The school’s got two houses next to the park and they’ve already knocked one down, which was to be a kindergarten and an assembly hall. Nothing’s come of that.”
