Port Places: year in review 2024
First round the Bend, as Fishermans Bend used to be known in Port.
Fishermans Bend
Montague
Greystar’s Build to Rent project, The Gladstone (15 – 85 Gladstone St) was launched with fireworks on 28 November. The original permit for the site was issued a decade ago, in September 2014. The 700 unit development includes co-working spaces, gyms, pools, dog run and library. The original permit was for 1,023 apartments.
Normanby Rd
Projects under construction in Normanby Rd include
- The Local (245 Normanby Rd) a Build-to Rent (BTR) development of 324 units by LIFE Architecture (formerly CHT Architects)
- CDL (203 – 205 Normanby Rd) a BTR development of 237 units by Hayball, built by Crema.
- Gamuda Land’s Canopy (272 Normanby Rd) is under construction. Port Phillip Council recently supported the design of the 2,600 sqm public park to be created on Johnson St between Normanby Rd and Munro Sts. The design of the park is by respected landscape architecture practice Oculus. It will include over 4,500 native plants, nature play areas and picnic spots. Emma Cutting, Heartscapes and the Melbourne Pollinator Corridor, will also be involved.
Sandridge
A year ago the Port Phillip Council announced the purchase of the Australia Post site at 509 Williamstown Rd for $38.8m. The Council intends to create a new sport and recreation precinct on the site. No update is reported on the Council website.
Wirraway
In Wirrarway, two intense town house developments are nearing completion.
- id Land’s Port Lane
- the former Rootes car factory’s site covering the block Plummer x Salmon x Williamstown Rd x Smith St. The former Rootes administration building and showroom fall into disrepair in spite of having heritage protection.
These two developments call into question ways of doing density. Both blocks were large enough to allow a higher density development with townhouses to the main roads leaving room for open space. Instead the public realm in these two developments is dominated by car access and egress.
In May 2024, the state government acquired the site at 299 Williamstown Rd (cnr Smith and Williamstown Rds), for a new primary school due to open in January 2026. Demolition of the existing buildings is underway by Mann Group.
NEIC (National Employment and Innovation Cluster)
The former Herald and Weekly Times site adjacent to Westgate Park has been progressively demolished over the course of the year by Delta demolitions. It is proposed to be the site for a new data centre for NEXTDC.
Preparation has begun for Westgate Park to transition from Parks Victoria to City of Melbourne management on 1 January 2026.
In June the government announced the preferred route for a prospective underground rail network to Fishermans Bend. No funding was attached to the proposition. With Metro 1 approaching opening, there is active discussion about Metro 2 which would connect the Werribee line via Fishermans Bend, the CBD, Parkville, Fitzroy and Clifton Hill to the Mernda line.
Work continues on preparing for University of Melbourne campus which is planned to open in 2026.
Port Phillip Council Elections
Top issues in the local government elections held in October were crime in Bay St, and Port Melbourne in general, and the future of Waterfront Place.
The administration of local facebook page Port Melbourne Focus was far from even handed, denying access to founder of the group Heather Cunsolo.
Nevertheless, former mayor Heather Cunsolo was successful in Port Melbourne with 2667 primary votes (42.41%). In spite of a strident and well funded campaign, her opponent Adrian King polled 1617 (25.71%)
Alex Makin was successful in the Montague ward in a tight three way contest.
Alex secured 1466 primary votes, Judy Sahayanathan 1487 votes and Peter Martin 1383 votes. The result was decided after the distribution of preferences.
Port Melbourne
Waterfront Place and Station Pier
CASA Property bought the site in November 2024 and immediately began demolishing the remaining buildings, damaged by fire in 2014.
103 Beach St (former Beacon Cove foodstore)
Construction is nearing completion by Espire.
Cruise shipping
Cruise ship season began on 24 September with the arrival of the Diamond Princess. Disney Wonder has been a frequent visitor.
The visit of the Mexican Navy’s tall ship Cuauhtémoc brought life and interest to Station Pier. Visitors were welcomed.
Bay St
Retail vacancies are around 10% according to the Port Melbourne Business Association. New comers Brulee and Babi Ben (formerly Balderdash) are doing well. There are four ‘smoke’ shops in Bay St.
Uniting opened an op shop in Bay St in October. There are now five op shops in Port Melbourne: Red Cross, Salvos, Vinnies, Uniting and the Epilepsy Foundation. Bay St works well for op shops as all shops have rear access.
The former Port picture theatre remains a burnt out shell with further damage after wild weather.
Housing
The new high rise residential developments in Fishermans Bend are all Build-to-Rent. It will be interesting to observe how eagerly people take up this housing option.
The year was dominated by the crisis in housing affordability, as well as cost of living pressures and inflation.
Construction began on the Barak Beacon estate site soon after planning approval was given. The development will replace 89 dwellings with 408.
163 houses were sold in Port Melbourne this year (145 in 2023). The median price of a house in Port between December 2023 and November 2024 was $1,550,000, down -3.4%.
245 apartments were sold in Port Melbourne in the last twelve months (258 in 2023) The median price was $720,000. Growth over the past twelve months was 0.0%.1
The official cash rate as determined by the Reserve Bank at today’s date is 4.35%.
Transport and mobility
Improvements were made on the 606 bus service from Fishermans Bend to Elsternwick Station. It now runs on weekends, and earlier and later in the day.
November sales figures released by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries and the Electric Vehicle Council show there have been 82,960 EVs sold in the first 11 months of 2024, a modest 3.1 percent increase over 2023.
Sales of petrol cars are down 11.1 percent for the year.
Xpeng, the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer, will soon open ‘an experience centre’ in Port Melbourne.
An average of 1,000 vehicles per day come in through the Port of Melbourne.
Waste
In one year of operation (1/11/2023 to 1/11/2024) one billion containers were processed through the Container Deposit Scheme.
The operator for this region, Return-It, opened a staffed depot at 30 Thistlethwaite St in January.
Volunteers from 3207 Beach Patrol and its sister group, Love Our Streets 3207, continued to gather data on rubbish collected in Port Melbourne this year.
The sharpest fall in containers collected was on the streets suggesting the 10c deposit is proving a powerful incentive.
| 3207 Beach Patrol | volunteer hours | glass bottles | plastic bottles | metal cans | |
| 2024 | 976 kg | 912 | 200 | 700 | 461 |
| 2023 | 936 kg | 667.16 | 249 | 677 | 553 |
| 3207 Love our Streets | |||||
| 2024 | 725 kg | 262 | 174 | 566 | 678 |
| 2023 | 1556 kg | 390.32 | 476 | 1799 | 2366 |
Nature and Biodiversity
In 2023 Emma Cutting, with support from the Port Melbourne Primary School community, laid the mulch foundation for a block length nature strip to add to the Melbourne Pollinator corridor. This year, with volunteers, she planted it. Emma intends to connect the Royal Botanic Gardens to Westgate Park, one street garden at a time.
Danks St has gone from being a neglected nature strip to a biodiverse corridor. More rare plants will be planted in Danks St which will become a seed bank for future plant propagation.
At the Yalukit Willam Nature Reserve observations of species not seen in the area for a generation continue to be made. Plants that have not grown in this region for more than 100 years are being re-introduced. The first growling grass frog to be recorded at the Reserve was observed in October.
The Council invested heavily in sports grounds at Lagoon Reserve and Murphy Reserve.
A pump track was built at R F Julier Reserve and the Graham St skate park was refurbished. Both are very well used.
The Port and Shipping
The largest ship to visit the Port of Melbourne this year was the Seaspan Breeze – 337 metres in length and 48.2 metres in beam Swanson East Patrick Terminals.
The weather
The hottest day in Melbourne in 2024 was 17 February when it reached 41.3 degrees. It reached 39.2 degrees on Monday 16 December. On that day, a grass fire, which appears to have been deliberately lit, spread in Westgate Park.
In Port, in late Februrary and early March, we smelt the bush fires in Beaufort and near Ballarat.
The coldest day was 16 August when it reached 0.5 in Melbourne.
The wettest day was 2 April when 53.3 mm of rain fell at Olympic Park.
Climate
2024 on track to be the first year to exceed 1.5ºC above the pre-industrial average. November 2024 was the second warmest globally only behind November 2023.2
Water
On 12 December Melbourne’s water storages are at 87.8% (95.4% in 2023). On average, stream flows from rainfall into Melbourne’s storages are not enough to supply Melbourne’s population, which grew by around 140,000 over the past year.
AI moved from the margins to the centre of public interest and conversation with its implications for news media, national security, education, employment and energy use.
Word of the year
‘Enshitification’ is Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year meaning noun Colloquial the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.3
While we have all experienced this phenomenon, it led me to ponder what its opposite might be?
Words that have flowed beneficially through my year have been reciprocity and regeneration. Always having reciprocity it mind. Giving back rather than always taking. And regeneration – practices and people making the world a better, rather than a worse place.
Sources and references
1 realestate.com
2 Copernicus Climate Change Service
3 Maquarie Dictionary
Gary Levy
Dear Janet, Well, here we are again, 46 weekly PP posts and a whole year later. At the very least, your final post reminds us, yet again, of the selfless and tireless work you have been doing as the local sprite, keeping a close eye on, and hand in, so many issues that together constitute the dynamic, changing and yet also binding features of ‘all things Port’ (and much beyond too). I looked back at your equivalent annual review from 10 years ago and see that you end with reference to a couple of “important heritage” buildings that were being repurposed for the then-newish Albert Park College: “This will bring life and young people into a part of Bay St that has had very little interaction with the community. The projects, ideas and interactions that will happen in these old buildings will no doubt shape the local and wider community for years to come”. The way you conclude that review seems to encapsulate various key and recurring elements of your Port Places project. Specifically, the priority given to life-affirming initiatives that promote greater connection, interaction, and cohesion between people (and many other creatures), places, physical structures, as well as the integral-and integrating- dimensions of thought and the imagination. Looking at your 2024 ‘Year in Pictures’ also reminds me how much you are always ‘out and about’- attending both widely and deeply, as well as up-close and more ‘granularly’, yet always respectfully, non-judgementally, ‘glass-half-fully’, encouragingly. Not only does the sky feature very commonly in your photos (a reminder of your constant ‘out-and- aboutness’) but it is usually much more blue than grey. Such images, again, seem to reflect the ways in which you flit (sprite-like) from place to place around Port- tracking, documenting, reporting, amplifying, advocating, honouring, reciprocating, generating, regenerating, and transforming so much of what was, what is, and what is still in the process of becoming. With thanks, as always, and festive wishes, Gary