SITING THE MUSEUM OF VICTORIA

By Tervor Huggard

Is it to be Position, Position and Position or is it to be Isolated from
Transport, Isolated from the other arts and Isolated from its most important
resource - People?

A paper on the Strategic Planning of our City and the appropriate position of
the

Museum of Victoria to benefit the City, the State and the Museum by Trevor

Huggard, Former Exhibition Trustee, Lord Mayor of Melbourne and Chairman of

Melbourne Strategy Plan Committee.

While there is much that could be said about the design and its disrespect for
the Great Hall replacing its recently restored Centennial Gardens on Nicholson
Street with a car park entrance and ramp, a bus parking station at its main
entrance central axis to Rathdowne Street and the obliteration of many fine
views of the dome from northern aspects I will not dwell on any of these
issues in the limited time available today.

Of much greater importance is the key strategic planning issues relating to
the city and its host role for the whole of the state and where we place one
of the states most important assets, a unique asset, the Museum of Victoria by
its nature is a one off, naturally positioned, hopefully, at an accessible,
well located venue where regular visitation by all Victorians, especially
those without access to cars, school children, overseas, interstate and
intrastate visitors can occur.

Most importantly it should be in a location where people who never intended to
visit the Museum when they set out on their days activities will become
conscious of its existence and have their lives enhanced by being drawn into
the Museum and discovering its intellectually stimulating and therapeutic
benefits to their lives.

Let there be no mistake in understanding that the Casino management understand
this
point with vivid clarity!

They have positioned themselves so that they are geographically and
psychologically central to our lives and our culture, not peripheral to it.
Many people perhaps wish they were not, but that is the subject of a separate
debate.

We must make sure that the intellectual pursuits are well positioned to make a
contribution to all of our lives and we do not have to seek them out.

Access for all is crucial, obvious positioning is vital, public debate essenu
and a process that ensures that the ultimate decision makers are well informed
and fully aware of the issues and concerns before they make their irreversible
decision.





Q1= of those four criteria is being addressed today, hopefully the other three
will follow.

In the 1985 Strategy Plan, a plan that is to be regularly reviewed and updated
as a blueprint for this city, which I had the good fortune to be chairman of,
it became obvious in the detailed research and just over 1000 meetings in 10
months with every diverse interest group in this complex city, that certain
aspects of our city are crucial to uphold or your city will suffer and wither
irretrievably.

The important principle of having a 'strong centred city' not a city with a
dead heart was a
central platform of the plan.

The very reason why the Melbourne City Council has had an adopted policy of
fighting hard to retain the large array of government departments in the city
rather than allowing them to drift and decentralise to remote locations, even
although none of them pay rates, placing a huge financial burden on the
council's budget, is that the enormous investment in the underground rail loop
and our public transport system can only be justified if the very hub of the
system provides access to all those facilities.

It is also an economic fact that where government investment locates itself,
private
investment follows.

Conversely where government investment deserts the city, private investment
quickly
follows.

This principle is starkly obvious in our city at this very moment.

A recent press article expressing concern about the decline of Russell Street
by the Chamber of Commerce and BOMA highlights that when corresponding
decisions to vacate the Magistrates Court, Russell Street police headquarters
and the Queen Victoria hospital site all occur more or less simultaneously an
instant stop to precinct activity occurs leaving the area and its surrounds in
serious decline.

The Greek precinct, Chinatown and the general retail area suddenly hit the
wall and
disastrous commercial decay ensues.

The Queen Victoria hospital generated enormous activity for the immediate area
through extensive rural Victoria numbers demanding accommodation, food and
back up services around the clock.

The present thinking of possibly turning it into a city park is bizarre to say
the least.
The ultimate irony is that we are turning our public gardens into building
sites and our
building site into gardem!

Unfortunately this extraordinary 'switch of sites' behaviour costs the tax
payer heavily but
fills the pockets of a few select individuals handsomely.

I do hope the decision makers see the irony and correct the ships course as a
matter of considerable urgency.
The continuing process of asset stripping of our city has been identified by
the 1985



Strategy Plan and its 1990 review and alarm bells sounded about the decline of
the city.

It is by neglect, or design, not necessity and must be halted-

Walter Burley Griffin's design for Canberra with its central spine extending
from the war memorial to parliament house seems to be well understood by
planners and the public alike.

The civic spine from our war memorial past the deliberate placement of our
civic assets, the town hall, the city square, St Pauls Cathedral, the National
Gallery, Flinders Street Station, the State Library and the Museum of Victoria
and leading up to, as Barry Humphries wryly noted in the 1970's "that other
book end of our culture, Carlton United Breweries" is not nearly as well
understood.

Its importance to Melbourne is enormous and major civic decisions over the
years have been consistently based on this understanding and recent decisions
to close Swanston Street to through traffic as our main processional spine
where every event and procession from the Anzac Day march to the Moomba
procession occurs acknowledges this.  A current decision on the books to build
the $100 M plus Federation Square at Princes Bridge consolidates this
position.

it is extraordinary to me that on 3 sites all worthy of serious consideration
Federation Square, Queen Victoria Hospital site and the Carlton United
Breweries site all desperately looking for a primary use to arrest the decline
of our cities activity and vibrance and all strategically located on our main
civic spine and processional way are ignored.

It is even more extraordinary to me that the Museum would happily vacate its
location of dominance in the city, and in the minds of all Victorians, from
its present location where expansion without the disruption of moving could
occur.

As pointed out it is not only the obvious vacant Queen Victoria Hospital site
that

surrounds the Museum at present but it abounds with vacated sites in the
former legal


precinct as well.  The opportunities for endless, uncontroversial, publicly
welcomed
expansion are endless.

One of the great museums of the world, the British Museum thrives on retaining
its location in London by acquiring neighbouring buildings and sites and
adapting them for their use.

it is not disadvantaged by this at all, on the contrary, and it reinforces the
precinct activity and makes a major contribution to that city.  It will be a
tragedy for Melbourne and the Museum if it is not put where it will be loved
and needed.

The British Museum also benefits by having a Museum Station on the underground
which firstly constantly reminds visitors of its existence and secondly
simplifies the process of finding it by simply travelling to Museum Station.




In Melbourne there are 197 stations on our Metropolitan network, only one of
them was

named after a dedicated use and activity - Museum Station - what a marketing
coup!

Not even the AFL has an MCG Station - but I bet they would love to see that!
Some

will hasten to point out that the Showgrounds Station and Flemington
Racecourse are
dedicated stations but they are once a year stations on a dead end line.
The State government wanted $250,000 to extinguish the Museum Station name and
sell it
to Melbourne Central as Melbourne Central!  They understood the marketing
advantage!

Why anyone would want to abandon such a clear marketing advantage and high
profile
address is beyond comprehension.

This proposed address is remote, difficult , car based and not well served by
public
transport.

The use of either the Queen Victoria Hospital site and other related precinct
sites or the
CUB site could all retain Museum Station as our only dedicated station.

An opportunity to invest in our city with a $250 M public building is a once
in a life time opportunity and should be strategically located to make a
contribution to the city not located to the detriment of our public gardens.

In September, 1986 the M.C.C. commissioned a detailed report by Rex Swanston
on the
use of its public parks and gardens.

The first point, made is that gardens are infinitely more fragile and
sensitive to use than
parks and fall into a quite different category of public amenity than
parkland.

The Carlton Gardens are exactly that - a garden, not a parkland and need to be
very
carefully managed.

Secondly it was recommended that major events and activities should be avoided
in them.

This policy was adopted by M.C.C. at that time.

The replacement of our democratically elected council by state government
appointed commissioners meant that not only has this policy on management of
the gardens been ignored but also the presence of councillors on the
Exhibition Trustees to ensure that knowledge and daily dialogue occurred but
also the process of planning permit applications and rights to objection
lapsed as well.

Simply put, the delicate balance of checks and balances that have existed and
have been successful in retaining this building and these gardens for
posterity for the past 116 years were rudely interrupted and removed.

The public alarm and concern about this proposal is well founded not simply
for what is proposed but what it commits these gardens to.



It is a current fact that in the Melbourne City Council area where a public
institution is located in a park land or a garden they currently have
objectionable and unwanted expansion proposed or under way alienating parkland
at an unprecedented rate! i.e.

Princes Park -       Carlton Football Club

Royal Park

RQyal Park

Tennis Centre

Hard paved car parking and major alienation of park land for
the zoo

Proposed relocation of the Royal Womens Hospital to the
Royal Children's Hospital site

Multi-deck car park in Goshs Paddock

Carlton Garnd.=-    Museum proposed

Albert Park, Kings Domain, FairticM, the list goes on and on.

The main point is that wherever an institution is placed in the middle of our
parkland it remains in conflict forever with that garden as the insatiable
demand for expansion, particularly for car parking puts future politicians,
governments and communities under constant pressure to accept the current
'quite reasonable' incremental increases of use.

Anyone opposing such reasonable requests is constantly painted as being
unreasonable or
difficult.

THE PLACEMENT OF MAJOR INSTITUTIONS IN A PARKLAND CONDEMNS THAT PARKLAND TO
CONTINUOUS AND INEXORABLE ALIENATION OF THAT PARKLAND AND REMAINS, IN PLANNING
TERMS, FATALLY FLAWED AS A PHILOSOPHY.

IT MUST BE COMPREHENSIVELY REJECTED WHEREVER IT IS PROPOSED!

This museum proposal clearly is being built with an acknowledged shortfall of
car parking.  It will immediately be under pressure to cope with that and the
proposals for expansion will commence immediately, not in 10 years time.

No matter how sincere promises are by the museum or any planner or politician
the reality is that history has proven that none of them can provide any
guarantees that expansion will not occur, on the contrary we know from logic
and experience that it will and must occur just as each and every facility in
our parklands is expanding at the current time.





The Exhibition Buildings were built before the motor car.  The alienation by
the motor car since has been appalling and has already commenced again with
the parking of vehicles around the Great Hall and installation of a totally
offensive ticket box and boom gate at the eastern entrance where the
Centennial Gardens were reconstructed for pedestrian access only in the
1980's.

I was very proud to be a Trustee in the 1980's and be part of the renaissance
of the restoration of this building, the largest Victorian restoration in the
world, and the 4 stage restoration of the gardens to ensure we once again saw
this building standing in a garden setting.

Stage 1. The restoration of the Centennial Gardens to the eastern face on
Nicholson Street removing the sea of cars took place.  The removal of the high
cyclone fence to the north car park was removed to allow public access, the
process for reinstatement was well under way.

It really incences me to hear the government say they are only taking over an
old car park
and no trees will be lost.  Let there be no mistake they are taking over our
gardens!

Our gardens are not cheap development sites.

This car park long identified by the community and the Trustees was
unacceptable and
was progressively being reinstated to gardens once again.

In concern at the then Hamer governments intention to build a 3000 seat
convention centre
on this site in 1979 I wrote a detailed report called 'When is a garden, not a
garden

The points made today were articulated clearly and presented to the
government.

To his credit Premier Hamer listened and abandoned the proposal.  Premier
Kennett
should do the same now.

It is important to note that the government had said then that its decision to
proceed with the proposal was far too advanced, irreversible and could not be
stopped, but it was stopped.

These same points contained in that report are more relevant than ever today.
I have also heard the arguernent put by this government that it is too late to
change course and it would cost too much to proceed - not bad for a government
that stopped Daryl Jacksons prize winning design when it was nearly completed
at south bank!

It is indeed ironical that right at this moment at huge expense to the tax
payer the gas and
fuel twin towers are being demolished generally acknowledged as a planning
disaster.

It was allowed to occur because it is on crown land and no planning permits
were needed.

Similarly the Metrol building built in Batman Avenue obliterated the all
important view from Russell Street to the Botanic Gardens and Government House
and contravened the 1974 Strategy Plan and had occured again because no
planning permit was applied for.

The Premier responded to public outrage and instructed the half built building
be
demolished - a very gutsy, but correct decision.



He instructed all his government departments that they must apply for planning
permits
whether they were legally needed or not.

A similar requirement was placed on the Exhibition Buildings in 1979 and
worked
extremely well until it was conveniently forgotten for this project!

Public scrutiny and planning permits protect politicians from themselves and
we the public
from planning disasters that should have been foreseen.

Remember good proposals have nothing to fear from planning permits, only bad
proposals
have anything to fear!
What an outrage that even the design of a small heritage ticket box to replace
a totally disastrous series of unfortunate out buildings in 1987 saw fit to
engage public scrutiny and quite rightly apply for a planning permit yet a
12,000 M , $250 M structure does not.

What an outrage that the debate has been consciously diverted to architectural
design rather than one of strategic planning and siting.  It presumes that it
is alright to build a Nuclear Reactor in Bourke Street provided it looks
alright!

I do not want to debate the colour of the doorknobs, I want to see a proper
decision made
on the correct siting and location of our museum.

In Summary:-

We do not want another Gas and Fuel twin towers or a Metrol building by
ignoring
process.

We do not want one more institution dropped in the middle of a public gardens
where its
inevitable expansion will destroy the gardens.

We do not want another legacy of a facility that doesn't work because a
planning permit considering all the key issues of transport, parking, access,
amenity, scale, size, current infrastructure and environmental impact is
ignored.

We do want - a world class museum in an 'A' grade location.

We do want - the appalling neglect by successive governments to the museum at
the expense of the other arts, tennis centres and great southern stands, etc
to finally be properly balanced with a genuine commitment to the intellectual
pursuits and provide a museum which is welcomed by the community.

Swanston Walk has . had a 63% increase of pedestrian traffic since its
implementation but those that criticise it as a failure don't recognise that
it needs the major government investments and community assets to remain or
locate along it to guarantee the teeming life we all crave for it.

Unless this once in a lifetime opportunity of a $250 M project is invested in
the positive development of our city rather than another sad chapter in its
decline then our city and the Museum will be the poorer for it,