DEVELOPERS who want to build apartments and retail buildings in Frankston in future may have to pay money to council for car parking spaces elsewhere if they are unable to provide enough parking on site.
Councillors at this month’s public council meeting decided to push ahead with plans to charge developers $19,500 car park space to be built elsewhere in future if land restrictions at a development site make it impossible to include parking spaces required under Frankston Planning Scheme regulations.
Cr Colin Hampton said council regularly was forced to waive any requirement for a minimum number of car park spaces at apartment and townhouse developments for residents and visitors.
“We need to have a mechanism to be able to go to VCAT and argue that if there’s an inability to provide car parking spaces on site then we can take money and set that aside and in future build car parking spaces that will become even more important to this city in the future.”
A cash-in-lieu scheme would allow council to stockpile cash collected from developers to build more car park spaces on council-owned land in Frankston.
A survey conducted by traffic consultants SALT in March found on-street parking in central Frankston is peaked at 95 per cent capacity at 1pm in the afternoon.
Mayor Cr James Dooley noted car parking “is the single biggest issue” causing problems for council when considering planning applications.
When asked by The Times, the mayor said there are no concrete plans yet to build additional car parks and it is “too soon to tell” if users would pay to park in spaces funded by cash collected from developers.
Council officers estimated a cash-in-lieu scheme could rake in between $175,000-$1.05 million annually and this money could be accumulated “for a number of years” to finance public car parking when appropriate.
Several councils elsewhere, including Dandenong and Casey councils, have cash-in-lieu schemes in place for car park projects.
SALT survey results noted “significant losses to on-street parking supply” along Playne St, Davey St, Kananook Creek Boulevard North and Young St.
Bayside Shopping Centre recently scrapped its $4 early bird daily parking rate for those arriving before 6am and increased the daily parking rate from $11 to $12 in an apparent bid to deter non-shoppers from parking at the centre.
Frankston Council will now ask state Planning Minister Richard Wynne to approve the cash-in-lieu plan before seeking public feedback.
