Victorian taxpayers buy Ballarat officeworks a new parking lot

Victorian taxpayers have shouldered an $850k bill for a failed car park in Ballarat Central, with authorities offering no answers or apologies.

The Creswick Rd car park in Ballarat Central, which cost taxpayers $850,000, will be reclaimed by a private landlord this month.

The state government and a regional city council have refused to answer questions about why public funds were used to build a car park on private land in Ballarat Central.

Victorian taxpayers shouldered the bill for an $850,000 car park on Creswick Rd, built by the City of Ballarat, which rented the land for $200,000 a year from the beginning of 2018 until mid-May this year.

The car park opened to the public in 2019 and has operated with both free and paid parking.

It was used as a Covid testing venue for some time, but has remained underused in the form originally intended.

The Creswick Rd car park beside the current Officeworks, pictured on May 2, 2023.

The development was not released for public tender because, as local reports suggested, the parking lot’s cost blew out from an initial $180,000, which was beneath the relevant threshold.

On Monday, the City of Ballarat announced that the site’s landowner was reclaiming the blocks from May 15 to start work on what is understood to be a several-million-dollar extension or replacement of the adjacent Officeworks.

While hundreds of car parks have, in the meantime, become available elsewhere in Ballarat, neither the state government nor council would explain why private land was chosen for the Creswick Rd development in the first place or whether the site was always considered a short-term investment.

The council would not say whether there was any agreement with the landlord about continued public access to the site – access which will end after May 13.

The lot was meant to compensate for 275 parking spots lost in the footprint of the controversial $100m Mair St government office complex known as GovHub, which the government pushed past Ballarat’s usual public approval process, and into which up to 1000 public servants were supposed to have moved to “revitalise” the city’s CBD.

A workforce of that size, including 600 roles supposedly relocated from Melbourne, never arrived, and this week the state government refused to confirm exactly how many people now work in the building.

The state government put $47.8m towards GovHub and continues to rent the complex.

Despite its exaggerated promotion, the building has capacity for 968 “workpoints” spread across multiple government departments.

It is understood, however, that at least one department works out of a separate location in Ballarat even though it has a significant allocation of desks at GovHub.

In the past six months, metal cladding has fallen off the building twice, prompting Western Victoria Upper House MP Joe McCracken to remark that the structure appeared to be made of Lego and could be a hazard for pedestrians.

And despite GovHub not having been advertised to Ballarat residents during any city-led approval process, developers are using it to justify plans for similar CBD office buildings.

Official documents stated that when nearby car parks closed during GovHub’s construction, 300 replacement spots would become available at Creswick Rd.

The government gave the council $2m to build at least 1000 new car parks across the city at the time, and although nearly half of that money was spent on the Creswick Rd lot, it was some 10 months later that 280 parks became available there – for a fee, in the beginning.

Those spots now appear not to count towards the sum of promised spaces, with hundreds more planned across the city, once again in compensation.