New parks for Brunswick, Moreland after council land grab

Industrial land will be turned into parks under a $19m plan by Moreland Council to give people living in apartments more access to open space.

Moreland Mayor Natalie Abboud at the site of a future Brunswick park on the corner of Breese and West streets.

Parks will be created on two industrial sites as part of an $18.9 million Moreland Council investment in green space.

The council will announce today it has bought two patches of land, totalling 2600sq m at 55-61 Tinning St and on the corner of Breese and West streets, to be reserved for open space.

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The money for the purchase came from the council’s Open Space Contribution Fund and the parks are part of A Park Close to Home strategy, which aims to ensure everybody in Moreland lives within 500m of open space.

The fund is collected by the council as part of the Victorian Subdiviaion Act of 1988, which allowed councils to collect funds following land subdivisions.

As of October 2017 the fund held $41 million and this is its first major purchase.

The Tinning St site that will become a public park. Source: Google street view

Both of the parks will sit in high priority areas identified by the council, which are confined to Brunswick and Coburg.

A warehouse currently sits on the Tinning St site, which covers approximately 2000sq m.

It last sold for just over $2m in 2013.

Seven separate homes make up the sites on Breese and West streets, which will all be bulldozed to create the park.

“It is the first time council has actively purchased property for this purpose and is part of our larger plan to provide for the needs of our growing community,” Moreland Mayor Natalie Abboud said.

The corner of Breese and West streets is surrounded by apartment buildings. Source: Google street view

Fawkner Residents Association spokesman Joe Perri has campaigned for more open space throughout Moreland and said while adding green space was always welcome, retroactively building parks was a by-product of poor town planning.

“There is a paramount need for open space in the southern area of Moreland that has been affected the greatest by development,” he said.

“The retro fitting of parks into suburbs is expensive and it’s going to get even more expensive and perhaps even prohibitive in the future”

Community consultation on what to include in the parks will take place later this year.

The parks will be completed in 2020.