Plan to build ‘Central Park’ over Domain Tunnel finally scrapped by City of Melbourne

Melbourne unveiled a bold plan to build its own version of Central Park atop the entrance to the Domain Tunnel. Fifteen years later — and faced with a $1.5bn bill — the plan was finally binned.

A billion-dollar plan to build a “deck” over the Domain Tunnel entrance to create a new “Central Park” has been scrapped – almost 15 years after the proposal was first unveiled by the City of Melbourne.

The bold vision was proposed back in 2010, with the deck set to deliver 7,000 sqm of open space in Southbank to cover the CityLink “void”.

The little-known proposal lay dormant for more than a decade before a feasibility study three years ago discovered that the redevelopment of the site would cost more than $1.5bn.

However, it was only this week that council management recommended that the plan be abandoned due to “constraints of land ownership, structural feasibility and prohibitive cost”.

An impression of the deck by architect Geoffrey Falk.

The ‘void’ above the Domain Tunnel as it looks now. Picture: Apple Maps

All 10 councillors at Town Hall on Tuesday night at a Future Melbourne committee meeting voted not to proceed with a master plan and business case for the decking.

But Southbank Residents Association president Tony Penna told the meeting that dumping the deck would be a “travesty to the Southbank community”.

“How can it have taken 14 years for the officers to conclude it was not feasible?” he asked.

He also hit out at the three-year delay in the findings of the feasibility study being made public.

“Why were we not informed that this study had taken place?” he asked.

“Once again, Southbank can’t help but feel we were kept in the dark.”

Earlier, Mr Penna told the Herald Sun that Southbank “desperately needed” the park as the fifth fastest growing suburb in the state.

“We’re absolutely devastated, to say the least, we were counting on that piece of land and what it was going to provide to the community was absolutely critical,” he said.

The Domain Tunnel entrance before and after the construction of the decking.

According to the plan, a deck over the site – bordering Sturt and Power streets near the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art – would create 34,000 sqm of “developable area” and “stitch together” the northern and southern fragmented halves of Southbank.

“The decking of CityLink creates an opportunity to establish a new ‘Central Park’ that will complement the new activity node and be centrally located to service a greater portion of Southbank,” the plan reads.

Despite sharing a name with New York’s iconic Central Park, the vision was that this “Central Park” would be far more modest in size, with 7,000 sqm equating to only half the size of the MCG.

But as a “significant new strategic project”, the City of Melbourne said it would “require the support of the state government”.

Central Park is an iconic feature of New York City.

Melbourne’s version would have been far more modest in size than Central Park in Manhattan.

City of Melbourne parks and city greening director David Callow defended the decision not to release the feasibility study earlier, telling the meeting what was important was that it was public now.

“It’s included in the report tonight for visibility,” he said.

But Greens councillor Rohan Leppert, whose party committed at the last local council election to commence planning on the deck, offered an apology.

“I apologise because I do think that it is a problem that it’s now 2024 but we effectively knew in 2021 that this project was not to be pursued,” he said.

At the meeting, councillors also voted to approve the $22m expansion of Normanby Rd reserve in Southbank as revealed by the Herald Sun last week.

Mr Penna said he understood the reasons why the deck could not proceed, however he did not believe the Normanby Rd reserve made up for the loss.

According to the feasibility study, redevelopment of the site would be “accompanied by multiple challenges”.

“The site is likely to be contaminated (and) its location … places limitations on load, structural penetrations and growing conditions for trees and vegetation,” it reads.

The plan, proposed while former lord mayor Robert Doyle was in office, had been likened to the long-touted proposal to deck over the Flinders Street Station railyard.