State government close to confirming Flinders Street as site for second safe injecting room

A Flinders Street building is expected to be revealed as the final preferred site for Melbourne’s second supervised drug injecting room trial.

The state government is believed close to confirming a Flinders Street building as its preferred site for Melbourne’s second supervised drug injecting room trial.

The Saturday Herald Sun can reveal that dozens of potential sites were investigated by former top cop Ken Lay who’s leading a consultation process on the issue.

Once the initial preferred site near Queen Victoria Market fell out of favour due to heritage issues and City of Melbourne’s opposition, the search focused on a closer look at the city’s drug hot spots.

This revealed an area near the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth streets as the CBD’s biggest problem area for drugs.

The government revealed last week that it had bought the former Yooralla building at 244 Flinders Street, but did not confirm it as the preferred injecting room site.

A government spokeswoman said no decision had yet been made, with multiple sites still under active consideration.

The former Yooralla building on Flinders Street is the proposed site of a new safe injecting facility. Picture: Mark Stewart

“A final decision will be made in coming weeks,” she said.

A source familiar with the process said: “It is pretty clear that if you’re going to put it (injecting room) near where it makes the most difference, it needs to be somewhere in that Flinders Street vicinity.”

. It’s understood that Mr Lay rated the suitability of at least 40 potential injecting room sites and then gave a short list to the government.

Once the location is announced, he will conduct a six-week consultation process and then deliver a report on his findings.

The facility will be run by community health services provider cohealth, which operates in a number of inner city locations.

Flywheel Bakery co-owners Anthony Abazis and Antony Wallace, on Flinders Street, are worried the effects the proposed safe injecting room will have on their new business. Picture: David Caird

City councillors are divided over the issue, with some backing the location, others preferring it be somewhere else, and a third group opposed to an injecting room anywhere in the municipality.

Salvation Army welfare worker Major Brendan Nottle, who runs the Project 614 service in the CBD, has been working in the city for 19 years and has seen many deaths.

“The use of drugs has been prevalent right across the city, but particularly around that area of Flinders and Elizabeth streets,” he said.

“The Salvation Army’s understanding of safe injecting rooms around the world is that there is no such thing as a stand-alone facility, all of them come with a suite of services.”

“So that anyone using drugs has access to that support with the ability to not only keep them alive but help them get back on their feet.”

Ambulance Victoria data shows that opioid-related ambulance attendances in the City of Melbourne were up 70 per cent in the five years to 2020, and had doubled in the CBD over the same period.