A community boating association says a new $2.5 million city boathouse on the Yarra – for use by one of Melbourne's elite private schools – has come at the cost of it having somewhere to conveniently store its boats.
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The finishing touches are being put on Richmond Rowing Club's new boathouse by Princes Bridge, a development largely funded by the rowing club's chief sub-tenant, the Methodist Ladies' College.
The boathouse will include, MLC says, a classroom for students and private deck overlooking the river.
The building was developed following the signing in 2012 of 21-year leases with Melbourne City Council and seven rowing clubs on the Yarra River, on peppercorn rents of $1 a year.
The Victorian Dragon Boat Association used to have space among the Yarra boatsheds and now has space in a new community boating hub at Docklands.
But a long-time leader of the association says Richmond Rowing Club's new boathouse is proof that Crown land is being unfairly taken from the public for private use.
"It's about private schools who have got millions of dollars to take over public space and not share it," said Trevor Huggard, a former lord mayor of Melbourne, who finished as the president of the dragon boat association this year after 30 years.
The association's dragon boats were stored for many years behind temporary wire fencing among the group of rowing sheds on the Yarra, including at the Richmond Rowing Club.
The current president of the dragon boat association, Eliza Campbell, said they would like to negotiate space again on the Yarra near Princes Bridge to store their boats.
But that appears unlikely at Richmond Rowing Club, with secretary Anthea Amos saying the dragon boat association had not followed Melbourne City Council's process properly back in 2012, and were now ''making trouble about a situation they are misrepresenting''.
"Of course they would like to have prime real estate down there," she said. "They are unhappy, but that's their problem ... They won't get back; this is burning bridges."
Ms Amos was at pains to say that the rowing club had redeveloped the boathouse, not MLC.
The Kew school, which did not respond to attempts to discuss its sub-lease with Richmond Rowing Club, says on its website the riverside space will "provide a new city base for the MLC curriculum and learning program".
Along with additional boat storage bays, the new boathouse will provide MLC with "an educational classroom, gym and change facilities together with an outdoor deck overlooking the Yarra".
MLC, according to the My School website, had a net recurrent income in 2012 of $54 million – including $5.3 million from the federal government and $1.8 million from the state government.
