Council endorses City North Opportunities Plan renewal

A City of Melbourne report said that more than 40 projects had been delivered under the Melbourne Innovation District City North Opportunities Plan 2020 and recommended that the document be renewed to continue guiding urban design in the precinct.

The Melbourne Innovation District (MID) City North Opportunities Plan states that it is “intended to be a ‘living’ document, which will require regular updates and revision every four to five years to ensure it remains relevant and useful”.

As the Plan’s five-year mark approaches in 2025, the council unanimously voted to renew the Plan, with Cr Roshena Campbell saying there are still many developments to come in the precinct.

 “We’ve been talking about change in our city, and our City North precinct is perhaps one of the best examples of that,” Cr Campbell told a Future Melbourne Committee (FMC) meeting on December 3.

“Even looking at what it was like four or five years ago, some parts of it now are almost unrecognisable in a good way,” she said.

It is an area of our city that continues to evolve that is seizing huge economic opportunities in our city around biomed and innovation, but also an area of our city that still has huge opportunities ahead of it.

Currently there are no proposed changes to the Plan, and any future suggestions that would alter the document will need to be presented to the council for consideration.

The MID City North district, which spans from RMIT’s Swanston St campus to the University of Melbourne in Parkville, is facing an upcoming period of change because of the imminent opening of metro tunnel stations at Parkville and the State Library.

Cr Philip Le Liu said that moving forward, developments in the district should focus on public transport.

“This is a great opportunity to implement or put forward a lot of the other opportunities that we didn’t get a chance to do,” he said. “For example, I’m a very big advocate of free trams, and transport is one of the biggest things around innovation hubs,” Cr Le Liu said.

“So, how do we put transport into this one, because at the moment what is really driving MID is actually none of these things, it’s actually student accommodation.” 

Cr Le Liu called the growth of student accommodation in the precinct an “explosion”.

“It is good, but it does not go to the heart of what innovation is about,” he said.

“It’s about creating new ideas, testing that and creating a sandbox in which people can actually go test their ideas. and commercialise it and then take it to the world.”

Cr Le Liu also said that he hoped City North could once again become a hub for startups.

“I do note that we have actually lost a lot of startups to Cremorne, so we also have an opportunity to then create and also be a leader in that,” he said.

“I also note that this is a great opportunity to work with the universities who really need to lean in on this given that they are some of the biggest landholders.”

Some of the projects completed under the MID City North Opportunities Plan so far include innovation centres at RMIT’s Social Innovation Hub and the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Connect, the relocation of global biotech company CSL’s headquarters to Elizabeth St, data collection around environmental management and use of public spaces in Carlton, and upgrades to the Lincoln Square Play Space.

Among planned future projects is the ongoing Queen Victoria Market precinct renewal.

Also on the list is the Australian Institute for Infectious Diseases, a new facility next door to the Doherty Institute, which is set to house 1000 scientists, academics, students and public health experts. •