By Chloe Booker
For decades, some of the most loved parts of Melbourne were at the mercy of developers, with few of the city’s heritage laws protecting them.
Now, a new set of controls and policies will help safeguard the city’s laneways, replacing previous planning rules which forced the Melbourne City Council to approve developments considered below community expectation.
Hardware Lane is loved for its outdoor dining and restaurants.
CBD locals and tourists have long enjoyed roaming its lanes including blue cobblestoned Centre Place for its boutiques, Hardware Lane for its restaurants, Tattersalls Lane for its bars and Hosier Lane for its street art.
New developments must now fit with the character of each laneway and preserve heritage building materials. Setback requirements will prevent bulky developments and shopfronts must not be dominated by waste, loading or parking access.
Acting Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece said the policy update sent a strong message to developers.
“We have already seen too many laneways seriously degraded, and so we have introduced tough new controls to protect against inappropriate development,” he said.
“Melbourne’s unique laneways differentiate us from so many other cities. It’s really important that we protect these assets.”
The most recent of the enacted new controls outlined in the policy update came into effect at the end of last year. But the update also includes the Hoddle Grid heritage review, which councillor Rohan Leppert said was sitting on new state planning minister Lizzie Blandthorn’s desk for final approval.
“That’s going to work harder than all the rest of them to preserve heritage fabric,” he said.
Reece, who campaigned on the issue with Lord Mayor Sally Capp in the run-up to the last council election, said previous laneway planning rules left the council forced to approve developments below community expectation.
Melbourne House on Little Bourke Street.Credit: Eddie Jim
In 2018, the council approved the demolition of Melbourne House, a century-old 23-storey building in the heart of the city’s Hardware Lane district.
Reece said the owner of the site, Singapore-based developer Roxy Pacific, put in an application under the new controls and the building was saved.
He said the new controls had also led to the rejection or improvement of numerous development applications in the Flinders Lane precinct, Hosier Lane and Blender Lane.
Tristan Davies, from Melbourne Heritage Action, said that previous councils had not protected the laneways enough. “[It’s] a very positive step because the laneways have often been ignored by heritage laws.”
The National Trust of Australia supported the council’s heritage protections. “We believe [they] will better protect the distinctive character of our laneways from inappropriate development,” said advocacy manager Felicity Watson. “It’s great to see these policies already resulting in better outcomes for our heritage places, and we will continue to watch their implementation closely.”
However the new measures will not stop the destruction of significant street art on Blender Lane to make way for a 41-storey development.
Artist Adrian Doyle in Blender Laneway.Credit: Scott McNaughton
Leppert, who leads the council’s heritage portfolio, said it was impossible to protect street art due to its ephemeral nature, but that the controls had led to more walls covered with it being protected.
“There will always be a canvas for street art in Melbourne,” he said.
Howey Place was one of the first laneways to be rejuvenated as part of the council’s Postcode 3000 strategy in the early 1990s, designed to get shoppers back into the city.
Traders blamed ongoing construction in Howey Place for its empty shops.Credit: Joe Armao
But in 2020, vacancy rates were more than 12 per cent and traders complained that constant development in the laneway, which runs off Little Collins Street, discouraged pedestrians.
Overdevelopment has also been blamed for loss of character in Hardware and Guilford lanes.
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