By Tate Papworth
A former president of the Sunshine Business Association has lashed out at Brimbank council’s decision to defer extending the multi-deck carpark in Sunshine.
Councillors voted against an officer recommendation to award a contract to design and construct (stage two) of the carpark at this month’s meeting.
Bruce White said the council had let down the community.
Mr White said significant concern had been raised over the loss of carparking when the VicRoads office building development displaced 90 spaces.
As a result of the public concern, the council, under its then administrators, resolved to approve the extension of the Brimbank multi-deck carpark to replace the lost spaces.
“The council has gone back on its word,” Mr White said. “It appears they’re going to wait for something to be over-used before going out and doing anything.
“There was an opportunity for real growth and to make Sunshine the epicentre of Brimbank, but it appears council has gone back to the Brimbank council-of-old behavior.
“They’ve gone back on an agreement because they’re interested in their own patches, not the greater good of Brimbank.”
Councillors John Hedditch, Sam David and Duyen Anh Pham voted in favour of the recommendation, but were out-voted by the other councillors present who had a number of concerns with the project.
Cr Bruce Lancashire said the extension would be unwise on a number of fronts.
“The most important concern is that a carparking strategy for Brimbank has not been prepared at this stage,” he said.
“Council has been asking for this strategy since the beginning of our term in office. Until this is completed it would be inappropriate to approve construction of this multi-deck.
“There’s been some quite strong pronouncement from experts in the media in relation to this in recent times, and what they’re saying is that it would be unwise to build a multi deck carpark at this time.
“An exception would be if the carpark was designed with enough space to allow the building to be re-purposed into something like residential apartments in the future.
“Unfortunately, the existing carpark was designed before the significant limitations were understood.
“It was built to minimum standards and cannot be re-purposed, and as a consequence any extension will also be unable to be re-purposed.
“Accordingly, it has been suggested that this building may need to be pulled down in 15 years.”
