Back in 1996 when I was ready to buy my first home, I decided on an upper level two bedroom flat on the corner of Randall and Dunlop Street in Maribyrnong.
There were various reasons why I chose that flat. It was above the flood plain, and being upper level meant it was less likely to get burgled (not that there was any real motive for anyone to steal my library, CD collection or very old portable TV).
But the main reason was that it was opposite the Maribyrnong Explosives Factory site. Most of the buildings were set further back from the streets, and land over the road from my new flat had a gentle grassy hill (known locally as Remount Hill) with a flock of sheep grazing on it.
It really did feel almost like being in the country. I could see the sheep on Remount Hill from my kitchen and study windows.
I stayed for six and a half years, and mostly liked it, except that there were the usual annoying issues with living in a flat (not having control over the water supply, neighbours who made too much noise or who occasionally filled my bin or used my vacant parking spot). But I did also long for a yard, where I could do a bit of gardening, and have more control over the maintenance issues in a single occupancy house than you have in a flat.
And so, about six months after I got a promotion at work, I painted the lounge room, tiled up the toilet (there was some sort of damp in one wall which meant it was impossible to successfully paint it), and put the place on the market.
I ended up selling for far more than I had paid for it, and moving 3km down the road to Avondale Heights, to the brick veneer pile I currently occupy, almost 22 years later.
As much of my life (despite now being happily retired) is situated outside Avondale Heights, I do pass the Explosives Factory site on Cordite Avenue on the bus (or on foot if I am feeling energetic) almost every day. After all, I try to visit my elderly mother almost every day, I like browsing at Highpoint West, and the fastest way elsewhere is to bus to Footscray Station and then train to the city or elsewhere.
Hence the Explosives Factory has been present in the background of my life for a long time, ever since my initial move to Maribyrnong in mid 1996.
The other defence facilities around Maribyrnong and Footscray North have been in my life even longer. Our childhood home was close to the Footscray Ammunition Factory, now the Edgewater estate, and the Maribyrnong Ordnance Factory was redeveloped for housing as the Waterford Green estate in the mid 1990s.
So I have always been interested in seeing if and when the Explosives Factory was going to be redeveloped as a housing estate (mind you, I would rather it got converted into a new University campus or left as a large urban nature reserve).
I have written about this in my blog for a long time. Every few years since I first moved to Avondale Heights, there has been attention from the state and federal governments, as well as from local MPs, about redeveloping the site. There was even mention of the site in the Federal Budget one year during the juvenile circus which was the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government, although that did not come to fruition.
Each time it gets mentioned, they double the number of intended residences, and the number of intended denizens of the proposed suburb.
It is a large site after all – 124 hectares starting from about 8km from the Melbourne GPO, and with a lot of river frontage. Prime real estate indeed.
Well… there is one issue – the site is hugely contaminated. Everyone knows this, and this is why, unlike some other earlier urban renewal of abandoned industrial sites around greater Melbourne, development has been delayed indefinitely.
Apparently it will cost about $300 million to remediate the contamination of the Explosives Factory site.
What this means is that ultimately, the Federal Government is likely to leave this site fallow or land banked until the value of the land is way greater than the cost of remediation.
Interestingly enough, at the moment, land in Maribyrnong is probably worth (given this month’s auction results) not far short of $20 million per hectare, which would place the value of a site of uncontaminated land in the area of 124 hectares almost at $2.5 billion. Even after $300 million is spent on decontamination the site is worth over $2 billion.
All the same, aside from some bulldozers parked around the front entrance at the West Maribyrnong tram terminus, there have been no signs of any efforts to start remediation.
Which does leave me wondering about how serious the government is about redeveloping this site, and why it has been left to sit there for so long?
Ultimately, I suspect, given that Maribyrnong now has three sites opposite the Explosives Factory with complete high rise towers of 10 stories or more (the “Arches” tower just makes the bare limit on that) and a much larger one on the way in the next 7 years, that high rise is the destiny of the Explosives site. Rather than putting in McMansions and townhouses on small parcels of land, as was the case in Waterford Green and Edgewater, I think that the cost of major site decontamination is going to be side stepped almost entirely by building many 20 or 30 storey apartment towers.
That will be a huge shame, as I would much rather that the site was reforested with gum trees and turned into a nature reserve.
Lost For Words! 