It's a waterfront dispute that's typically Brighton: well-heeled and highly educated residents versus their local council and a lifesaving club stuck in the middle, whose membership is desperate for better clubrooms.
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Bayside Council says Brighton Lifesaving Club, built before Melbourne's 1956 Olympic Games, needs a complete rebuild.
But locals argue the ageing clubrooms next to Brighton's iconic beach boxes need a revamp, not a knock-down redevelopment.
They're concerned a bigger complex could see the area swamped, bringing even more tourists to visit the beach.
With next month's council elections looming, the campaign to stop the council re-building the ageing clubrooms is gathering pace.
Bayside mayor James Long says the clubrooms need rebuilding. "The toilets have got rusty pipes. The [clubrooms] are outdated and it's not up to modern safety standards," he says.
The lifesaving club's treasurer, Tim Bolton, says volunteers are worn down after five years of campaigning to rebuild.
The rooms are "totally inadequate", he says. Equipment has to be kept off-site because of a lack of storage space and the floor is falling through. "We're just trying to replace redundant community facilities," he says.
Bolton says opposition to the plan is disappointing: "These people are so against what is a great voluntary organisation."
Residents, though, argue the ageing clubrooms, which sit next to Brighton's famous beach boxes, need only a revamp – not an ambitious expansion.
And with busloads of tourists already visiting the beach daily, a bigger lifesaving complex could see the area swamped, says Kristin Stegley, a former Bayside councillor and chairwoman of the National Trust.
"Under the guise of rebuilding the lifesaving club – which we all think is a great idea – they are taking license to also extend into parkland for commercial purposes," says Stegley, who argues the proposal is completely over-the-top and inappropriate.
On Sunday, despite rain and little notice of media interest in their cause, scores of Brighton residents came to voice their objections.
Among them was Weston Bate, a 91-year-old who wrote A History of Brighton in 1962. "It was regarded as a pacesetter in local history," says Bate, who knows the beach in forensic detail.
An enlarged lifesaving club would damage the beach's views, its sand dunes, and its flora and fauna, says Bate. He says the council's proposal has no public feasibility study and should never have proceeded to a fully fledged plan.
Opposition has also included a heritage listing application for the entire Brighton beach waterfront. The beach's beauty is due to it being left alone, and not developed like elsewhere, it says: "Compared to St Kilda, it has maintained unique natural values."
Alex del Porto, a councillor for the area, says Bayside wants to build "something that is going to be a signature not only for Brighton but for Melbourne". He says he understands the concerns about the proposal's size, and if re-elected would happily consider changes – including the need for a second level.
"I guess [opponents] are worrying about the visual bulk," he says. "But I don't think there's anyone who'd like to retain the existing lifesaving club as it is."
