Ballarat heritage concerns heard at public forum on future of the CBD

A public meeting heard concerns about the future direction of heritage controls in the city, learning the much-vaunted City of Ballarat Heritage Gap Review, begun in 2020, received just 12 public submissions on 17 properties.

Organised by Ballarat Heritage Watch, the meeting was addressed by two prominent voices in the protection of heritage: Emeritus Professor Michael Buxton, Design and Social Planning, RMIT, and Ian Wight, deputy chair of the Heritage Committee of Royal Historical Society of Victoria (RHSV).

It also canvassed the failure of the Heritage Urban Landscape approach adopted by council in 2016 to give adequate regulatory strength to protecting heritage, instead giving developers almost unfettered rein in the city through deliberately non-specific and unenforceable language.

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Intended as an opportunity for members of the public to discuss future development within Ballarat's CBD, the meeting also ranged across wider heritage issues such as the proliferation of infill.

President of Ballarat Heritage Watch Stuart Kelly urged those attending to provide feedback to their local councillors, all of whom had been invited to attend. Of the city's nine councillors only Samantha McIntosh was present, which gave an indication of the regard most councillors had for heritage, attendees said.

The City of Ballarat's director of growth and development Natalie Robertson also attended as a member of the audience.

Mr Kelly told the audience in coming months the City of Ballarat is considering a new CBD Urban Design Framework which will 'address and implement built form provisions/controls for the Ballarat CBD.'

"In Ballarat in a few short months this year council has approved a seven-storey apartment complex and a six-storey hotel on the CBD edge - both gaining approval as a result of vagueness regarding height limits for the CBD and surrounds," Mr Kelly said.

"Further buildings are proposed for other sites in and around the CBD. Height limits for these areas are undefined or discretionary not mandated. The increase in high buildings threatens the heritage skyline of Ballarat's CBD which is largely comprised of single and two storey buildings with landmark towers and church steeples. The intact Victorian and Federation era architecture of our city is one of its greatest assets in terms of cultural tourism and one of the qualities most loved by those who live here."

Both Professor Buxton and Mr Wight spoke to the threat of uncontrolled development taking place in the Melbourne and its suburbs, and the increasing likelihood of that development 'super wave' overwhelming Ballarat.

"I was at a meeting here, four or five years ago, and I said a tidal wave of development was coming Ballarat's way," Professor Buxton said.

"But I've revised that: is there anything worse than a tidal wave? Perhaps a Super Wave. It's development pressures in Ballarat underpin everything that's happening here. And they're only going to increase, and the (UNESCO) World Heritage Bid is going to add to that."

Professor Buxton said the City of Ballarat had failed to shape the city to survive in its current form, let alone as a heritage centre, by deliberately failing to enact mechanisms to protect buildings and prepare properly-considered strategy for growth, while adopting endlessly unfulfilled strategies.

When you look through all of Ballarat's strategies - they've been around for 15 year, and even longer, there's lots to plough through... these documents, they're full of wonderful sounding ideals," he says.

"This is the measure for one of the latest strategies: 'a place with a proud heritage reflected in its building the streetscapes and the living history, while showcasing innovation and creativity.' Now if you know what that means, please tell me."

He says words like 'innovation', 'dynamic history' and 'circles of sustainability' express a darker purpose, to place heritage and the built fabric of Ballarat as unimportant, to be considered way behind development. If local or state government was to be truthful about their intentions for development, Professor Buxton says, there would be a riot - perhaps not on the scale of Eureka, but certainly discontent.

"So they never say that, (instead) they qualify their statements," he says.

"They put out general nice sounding phrases that make us feel mean nothing. And that's deliberate; they don't have to tell us what they're up to. We have to find out what they're up to. And what they're up is development.

"The importance of heritage is that heritage in Ballarat, buildings in this case, but environmental conservation as well underlies everything we see as valuable. It underlies the economy, it underlies the social development and harmony, the identity of the community."

As part of a panel discussing questions from the audience, respected historian Anne Beggs-Sunter spoke of her frustration at being ignored by council when she tried to have important heritage guideline studies incorporated in the planning scheme for Ballarat.

"(I had) absolutely no success," Ms Beggs-Sunter said.

"If the (council) officers are not going to help, then we've got to go to the councillors."

Several members of the audience pointed out this was a problem without a solution, as the councillors cannot approach officers because of the regulation of the Local Government Act 2020, and the councillors themselves seem in lockstep with the pro-development opinions of officers and the City of Ballarat executive, as evidenced by recent statements by the former mayor regarding heritage as being limited to a few major streets in the CBD.

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"I think the question is: what is wrong with the council?," one audience member asked.

"We talk about strategy - well, at a deeper strategic level, what is it about council? Is it arrogance? Is it stupidity? Is it hubris? Or is it, as I cynically suspect, all about money?"

Long-serving heritage expert Lorraine Huddle said she found it astonishing the City of Ballarat was taking advantage of new state government laws to push through developments such as the Steinfeld Street bike paths without community consultation.

"Council officers said they didn't have to take any notice of the heritage issues, even though that had heritage protection in the heritage overlay, because the cost issue was something they could use to ignore the heritage," Ms huddle said.

"It does seem extraordinary to me that any officer in the City of Ballarat is actively ignoring protecting our heritage."

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