A COMMUNITY sporting club fears gymnastics is being frozen out of a planned $14 million tennis centre and sports hub at Centenary Park. An online petition is calling on Frankston Council to honour a pledge made last year to include a dedicated gymnastics area and programs at a purpose-built complex at McClelland Drive planned to be complete by 2019. Bayside Gymnastics Club vice-president Mel Newham posted a change.org petition online last week urging council not to exclude gymnastics from the sports centre. The petition says council representatives attended the club’s annual general meeting last October and “very proudly announced” that…
Author: Neil Walker
A MILLION dollars has suddenly been splashed out by Frankston Council in an attempt to break a deadlock on lease negotiations and begin the expansion of the Frankston Basketball Stadium amid fears council is trying to seize control of the stadium and its operations. A majority of councillors voted to waive the need for the Frankston & District Basketball Association to contribute $1 million of its members’ money to the $12.7 million stage one of the project but the money came with a condition to agree to a complete review by council of the stadium’s management. Councillors also authorised council…
PLANS to subdivide part of Cruden Farm in Langwarrin for residential development would see more than 100 houses built on land near the former homestead of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. A planning application to subdivide a parcel of land within the 54-hectare estate has been received by Frankston Council in a first step to try to rezone land from its current Rural Conservation Zone status that prohibits residential development. The application is for a parcel of land at Cruden Farm to be subdivided into 116 lots of between 600-800 square metres. The bid to rezone the land will be controversial since…
A BID to build a four-storey apartment building at the Mentone Hotel car park site has been knocked back by Kingston Council. Councillors voted to halt a design and development overlay process at the latest full public council meeting on 27 March. Concerns over “setting a precedent” for four-storey development along Beach Rd were aired by councillors before six councillors voted to abandon a planning scheme amendment. Cr Rosemary West said only two out of 833 community submissions supported the planning application. “People do not want to open a precedent that will allow four-storey developments to be applied for in…
A MAJORITY of Kingston councillors want a section of Beach Rd to be narrowed to build the Mentone to Mordialloc part of the Bay Trail. The Kingston leg of the shared pathway for cyclists and walkers stretching from Altona to Frankston has been dogged by controversy over the removal of foreshore vegetation to build the Bay Trail. The Kingston Residents Association, the Mordialloc-Beaumaris Conservation League and the Kingston Conservation & Environment Coalition lost a joint VCAT case in April 2015 against council that argued the removal of foreshore vegetation was “excessive”. Council then built the 3-metre wide pathway between Charman…