Queen Victoria Markets

"The proposed redevelopment (or "renewal" to use the Lord Mayor's term) of the Queen Victoria Market will cost $250 million. Does this signify the start of a new battle for inner Melbourne or has the populace been sweet talked by the Lord Mayor into accepting the demise of the QVM as we know it - and love it? And what are the traffic and transport implications for the CBD and inner Melbourne of this redevelopment?" (Submission from the Friends of Queen Victoria Market)

Future Melbourne Committee meeting 5:30 pm Tuesday 14 July
Item 6.5 Queen Victoria Market Precinct Renewal Master Plan (pdf)

Submission from the Friends of Queen Victoria Market

I represent Friends of Queen Victoria Market, an active Facebook group with over 1300 ‘likes’.

In particular I want to speak on behalf of people like myself, the ‘customers’ who shop at the market every week.
• We spend hundreds of dollars at the market every week, and we do almost all our shopping there.
• Fresh produce vendors estimate we regular customers are responsible for 80% of their sales.
• We have ongoing relationships with traders and with other regular customers.
• The market is a significant element in our life and we are an important part of the market community – arguably THE most important part of the market community …

…. yet our voice has been lost in the consultation process.

We have been subsumed into a category of ‘visitors’ but we have quite different interests to the tourists and other occasional market shoppers.

Many of us made the points I make here were also made very vigorously in the consultation process but somehow our input has not made it into the final reports and feedback.

So I welcome this opportunity to represent our views.

Some of us have shopped at the market for decades and many are second or even third generation market customers.

We value the market heritage but we recognize that this extends beyond built heritage to an appreciation of the market as a trading and social space based on its functioning as a community space for small scale trading for over 150 years.

If the bulk of the present market area is remade as public space for events, pop up markets, curated ‘craft’ (just like so many other markets) and so on, the market will lose what is distinctive in its heritage, even if the buildings remain.

Our first requirement is that the market remains an everyday shopping place:

• We do not support plans to reduce fresh produce trading at the market to fewer, fixed stalls, as this will decrease quantity, range and variety of fresh produce.
• We do not see any benefit for customers in updating plant, storage, or trader parking.
• Increasing onsite cool rooms will kill the whole point of market fresh produce, as will extending the opening hours.
• Some members have suggested that changing the market from an everyday shopping experience to a tourist destination is a way of justifying reduced parking provision.

Our second interest is in accessible car parking:
• We travel in from surrounding suburbs because we appreciate the kind of sustainable, value for money and varied shopping currently available at the market but this is only viable if the market provides accessible parking.
• Better pedestrian and bicycle access is not helpful to many of us who buy 20 or 30 kilos of food each week.
• Others of us bring small children or elderly and disabled relatives.
• We support market traders who have told you that any decrease in the total number of parking places available (currently 1200 including on street parking) would be a disaster for them and us.

Finally we are alarmed at the lack of specificity in this Plan and that it is left to the Implementation Strategy which is scheduled for completion in 2016 to address a number of these matters.

This has left market traders and customers in a state of uncertainty in terms of their future plans.

Especially as the market seems to be being currently being run down, which some members believe is being done in order to support the case for renewal:
• There are many, many empty stalls.
• Unlike supermarkets or many other fresh produce markets in Melbourne, parking is extremely expensive.
• Recent vacancies in the iconic Dairy hall have been filled by franchises, not small independent traders.
• New initiatives that are supposed to revitalise the market like the Cooking School and Melbourne Music Week have not been well supported, according to some sources.

The market community, rightly or wrongly, has interpreted this running down of the traditional market as indications of a deliberate tactic to justify the repurposing of the sheds.

There is a widespread perception in the community that the main and indeed the only beneficiaries of the redevelopment plans are the developers who will access land within the Queen Victoria Market Precinct and benefit from the new planning rules.

Signed: Miriam Faine, Friends of Queen Victoria Market

"The redevelopment and remodelling of the Queen Victoria Market (QVM) plus changes in its functions proposed by the City of Melbourne, led by the Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, should be ringing alarm bells amongst Melburnians. This is one of the biggest assaults ever mounted on the QVM in the history of Melbourne." (Julianne Bell, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.)

Report on Queen Victoria Market and Development Proposals by City of Melbourne [1]

In the early 1970s the City of Melbourne, with the support of the Victorian State Government, proposed to demolish the QVM and replace it with a combined Trade Centre, office and hotel. The Save the Victorian Market Committee was formed. Then Norm Gallagher and the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) . put Green Bans on the demolition of the QVM and guaranteed its survival from demolition and redevelopment. The QVM was put on the Historic Buildings Register. There is talk of nominating the site for World Heritage and it certainly fills an important place of Melbourne’s cultural heritage. Twenty years later, prior to his death in 2006, John Cummins (a former BLF official and then CFMEU official) gave market stall holders assurances that the QVM would be defended by the CFMEU should there be any retreat from agreements to save the Place. (This information paraphrases quotes from Dave Kerin’s history of the BLF.)

I have not analysed in detail the destruction of heritage should the City of Melbourne’s plans be implemented. It is certain that, however, that the current plans will destroy the social heritage of the QVM, maintaining the sheds as a kind of “Disneyland” market, which in the long term would not be sustainable

I thought it useful to look, firstly, at the fact that the QVM is possibly one of the biggest suppliers of fresh and processed food, as well as other retail items such as clothing, in the inner Metropolitan area. Dr Miriam Faine, who is a Convenor of the Friends of OVM Facebook group and who is alarmed at the changes proposed, says that the QVM currently supports traders who will lose their business if the development proceeds; offers a voice to market customers who shop regularly at the market (and are not 'visitors' but part of the market community); preserves the market as an every day shopping space for the people of Melbourne; and, she argues, provides a traditional market model with many small independent traders competing on freshness, variety, value and sustainability.

To the Lord Mayor and Councillors the market is just a show piece and a tourist attraction as they appear to have no clues that the market is an integral part of people's lives and plays an important part in supplying the metropolis with food. As far as I know the Lord Mayor of Melbourne does not live in the municipality of Melbourne and possibly has no experience of shopping for the family every week in the QVM.

The QVM is not just a market for the municipality of Melbourne but for a huge radius of suburbs. One reason that the Market serves this vast hinterland is because of the parking availability at the Market and also in the streets around, although complaints are made that charges are excessive compared to other shopping centres. There are 700 spaces at the QVM plus another 500 which are now under threat in the surrounding streets. It would be disastrous if they were removed. See the web page - http://au.parkopedia.com/parking/carpark/queen_victoria_market/3000/melbourne/ - which provides a run down of all available parking within reasonable reach for QVM patrons. There is certainly a case for retaining cheap parking easily accessible for QVM patrons, within the context of a broader objective of maximising space efficient and sustainable modes.

Public transport advocate Ian Hundley has made a great contribution to this report. His comments concerning transport have been included below.

With regard to the count of daily traffic numbers over the last 10 years for major arterial roads (Dudley Street, Peel Street, Victoria Street, Elizabeth Street) near to or abutting the QVM, it appears that these numbers have been static, or even declined, during this period. This is welcome news and confirms that Melbourne really only works as well owing to the fact that a substantial proportion of visitors travel by sustainable means. This is not the case with most of the suburban activity centres which are highly car dependent and face increased road traffic congestion as a consequence. The tram lines mentioned here in relation to the QVM connect with north and western suburbs.

An emerging threat for the north-west part of the City of Melbourne is the Victorian State Government's proposed Western Distributor which includes a feeder into the Melbourne CBD from the Westgate Freeway. Ian Hundley comments that he is of the view that, as this is a Transurban inspired toll road, they might well be looking to maximise road traffic numbers in this area.

We understand that daily visitors to/users of the market vary between about 22,000 and 32,000 with the greatest numbers being on Saturdays. Furthermore we understand that the QVM administration reports that a phenomenal ten (10) million people visit the markets every year. We do not know how many people visit the QVM as their one and only destination or how many people have multiple destinations on journeys within the CBD, one of which is the QVM.

It appears that the QVM, as currently configured, does not cater very well for the many patrons who use shopping trolleys, a design issue mainly. It is also an issue for public transport users in the area with no services on Elizabeth Street and Victoria Street being low floor. This will improve over time, but it is not happening quickly enough.

We consider it would help to get many more people onto public transport if a number of problems were addressed. For example, the Victoria Street tram corridor is not continuous which makes it difficult for quite a few people and there is no ready access to North Melbourne station from the QVM. Also, low floor trams would be a plus, especially for shoppers at QVM.

Finally with regard to transport and planning issues, I have heard that plans are being formulated by the City of Melbourne for Franklin Street to be closed; for QVM car parking to be removed; and for three 50 storey tower blocks to be built on the site. Franklin Street provides very useful access from Victoria Street through to the RMIT complexes on Swanston Street and through to the legal world in Lonsdale Street and William Street. Predictions are there could be disastrous traffic congestion resulting from the Franklin Street closure.

The QVM is seen as of central importance to people's lives enabling them to live within strict budgets. The food prices are the most reasonable in the metropolis. One is able to buy food items - costs go down in seasons of plenty. Also prices go down close to closing times so traders can dispose of goods. The QVM does not serve just residents in surrounding suburbs but also the international student population increasingly living in high rise apartments in the city. If a large part of the QVM is closed down then where will numbers shop? There are few Big Block Coles and Woolworths in the city. Many of the thousands of tertiary students who live in inner Melbourne seldom dine out. They need to watch their budget and want to shop locally and economically to cook at home.

Another point is that numbers of stall holders provide surplus food to “Second Bite” and charities so these services would be lost if the QVM trading were to be drastically reduced in size, as Lord Mayor Doyle’s “redevelopment” proposes.

The “deli” shops specialise in ethnic foods. The Greek deli shops, for instance, have a huge number of clients from the Greek Community from all over Melbourne. .

Also interesting to note would be just how many top City restaurants and cafes obtain their food from the market. I used to go to the organic foods section and encountered many restaurant owners/chefs purchasing fresh supplies.

My parents used to go every week from Camberwell for about 50 years! And I used to go to the QVM by tram when living in Parkville and North Carlton for many years. Many Melburnians remain loyal to certain stall holders and keep up patronage for a lifetime.

Queen Victoria Market is very special. For many years it been an effective antidote to mega sized, corporate retail food distribution and it needs to be retained as such for the benefit of the growing numbers of local, inner city residents including students, the loyal shoppers from the middle suburbs, as well as the visitors to the city.

There is a related topic which needs to be dealt with separately. It is difficult to imagine where fresh food will be grown given the rapid loss of arable food producing land with the spread of housing developments. The question arose some years ago when the Brumby Government extended the urban growth boundary to allow spread of residential housing into arable farming land. . Melbourne is now heading for 8 million population. Will we soon be reliant on imported food?

Signed:

Julianne Bell
Secretary
Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
PO Box 197
Parkville 3052

Mobile: 0408022408

Date: 3 July 2015

NOTES

This article is slightly represented from the original letter signed by Julianne Bell for Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc., which was entitled: "REPORT ON QUEEN VICTORIA MARKET AND DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS BY THE CITY OF MELBOURNE."