Campaign 2002: Keeping the Concourse Green & Concourse Bushland intact

* 2019

Work began on the modified plan below, but BCS Inc. is inquiring further whether the motion carried by Bayside City Council
in May 2017 below protects the trees and grassed area at the north-east corner of the Concourse Green from loss or harm.

The photographs, and the diagram below and accompanying table show the position and types of the 44 trees on the Green.

North-east corner of the Concourse Green	North-west corner of the Concourse Green
South-east corner of the Concourse Green	South-west corner of the Concourse Green

Beaumaris Concourse Green: Positions of the 44 native trees: 07 May 2019

* 2017
Bayside Council’s Maymeeting received the petition below and then heard 11 citizens’3-minute presentations on the staff recommendation to the Council to adopt the consultants’ plan for the Concourse, 9 of which supported the petition.

The video of the Council meeting is at bay-170523.mp4where the 3-minute presentations start at the
1:49:18 point. That of the BCS Inc. President, Greg Mier, starts at the 2:20:50 point.

Those presentations were followed at the 2:43:00 point by a Southern Ward councillor and former Mayor, Cr Laurie Evans,
moving a motion to adopt the Beaumaris

Concourse Streetscape Master Plan subject to making the following changes to the Concourse Green concept plan:

• removing the two east-west curvy gravel paths;
• replacing the boulders in the open gravelled north-east corner with picnic tables and chairs, subject to design approval;
• removing the flagstone pavers at the south of the Green;
• removing the tree up-lighting in the Concourse Green;
• removing the shelter; and
• removing the design item and artwork as shown to the south of the formerly proposed boulders.

Cr

Evans’s motion was seconded by Cr Rob Grinter, of Central Ward. It was carried 6 votes to nil (Cr Michael Heffernan of Northern Ward had left earlier). BCS Inc. thanks all Bayside councillors and the 861 petitioners for their help.

Consultants’ final version of the Beaumaris Concourse Streetscape Draft Master Plan Report, of 18 November 2016, is Item
10.4 on Pages 91-97 of the agenda of the Bayside City Council meeting of Tuesday, 23 May 2017 at 7 pm.

BCS Inc’s petition to Bayside City Council to KEEP THE CONCOURSE GREEN, GREEN is Item 7.1 on Page 7 of the agenda
of the above meeting, where it is acknowledged as having gained 861 signatures. Only 20 comments were made on the Council’s web page on the Concourse Green.

BCS Inc’s concerns about the Master Plan form part of its Campaign 2002. Proposals to alter the Concourse Green represent some $300,000 of the $1.4 million of precious ratepayers’ money proposed to be spent. The Concourse Green, shown below, has long been a distinctive quarter hectare of central Beaumaris public open space still entirely free of paving or gravel – just grass and its 58 native trees.

Changes sought to other parts of the Concourse – except as set out below – would likely not be objected to, although proposals to ‘jazz up’ presently blank walls could lead to future unsightly aspects.

Beaumaris
Conservation Society Inc. has the following
major concerns:

• • Devegetation of 20% of the Concourse Green at its north-east corner to replace trees and lawn with gravel or paving [Land all over Beaumaris is being relentlessly paved (concreted, covered with bitumen, gravel etc), so BCS Inc. strongly opposes any more replacement of public lawn or trees by other surface treatments, particularly in such a prominent and important place.

• • Boulders to be placed on the 20% of the Green to be devegetated – for a so-called ‘Beaumaris feel’  [A consultancy industry cut-and-paste stock artefact that has nothing to do with Beaumaris, given that sandy Beaumaris has no natural boulders at all].

• • Needless paths – 2 parallel diagonal gratuitous wavy paths (seeP. 4) joined to a north-south path along the eastern edge would trisect, and much reduce, the present substantial quarter hectare (2,625 square metres) swathe of grass and trees.[That would nastily fragment the lawn into three insignificant patches of some 600 square metres each, and would make the entire Concourse Green seem much smaller. Walking on mown grass is neither unpleasant nor dangerous and – in contrast to the consultants’ claim – is still a ‘Beaumaris feel’].

• • Proposed ‘uplighting’ of trees at night is opposed.[Trees’ natural condition is a 50% cycle of darkness, and there is quite enough stray ambient light pollution there already to enable their evening character to be discerned. Bird and microbat habitat, and neighbours’ evening amenity also need to be protected].
  • One or more vulgar entrance gimmicks reminiscent of the approaches to some hick town in the mid-west of the USA
    

• Failure of proposed new planting to be wholly indigenous, but to include cultivars and other non-indigenous plants, including an east coast rainforest species,Tristaniopsis laurina (à la the current much-objected-to Victorian School Building Authority example!)

The Concourse Bushland	The Concourse Green

TO

BELOW OF TATTY ASPECTS THAT BLIGHT THE
CONCOURSE GREEN & SHOULD GO.

Tawdry commercialism frames the Green	Disfiguring re-use of an obsolete sign	Gratuitous propaganda on the Green
Garish, brightly illuminated, needless sign clashes with Concourse Green’s qualities.	Graffiti next to a succession of opportunistic real estate agent’s signs	Twee Council sign in 1990s style since abandoned in many other sites.
Estate agents have enjoyed cheap publicity – to the Concourse Green’s disadvantage – since at least 2003.	Estate agent’s signs recently imposed on the Concourse Green	The Concourse Green in 2002, with less of the clutter that has accreted since

South entrance to the Concourse from Reserve Rd: Remove tatty signage disfiguring it, but please DO NOT add a touted ‘Entrance Column’, or other such gimmicky structure.	A rare day, on 27 October 2016, when the south entrance is not disfigured with one or more estate agents’ signs. They mar the Green’s corner, & have been overstaying, since at least 2003.

BCS Inc.notes that the Green continually has a disfiguring collection of real estate agents’ signs (as easily discerned by far the largest   print usually being reserved for their firm’s names)that

ostensibly – but in small print – advertise current functions and events, and keep advertising them, sometimes for over a month after they have occurred. There appear to be too many signs, present for too many days of the year, for the exemption in Clause

52.05.4 of the Bayside Planning Scheme to apply, so the prohibition in Clause 52.05-10, Category 4, Section 3 might apply, but it is not yet being enforced. A less disfiguring site for these estate agents’ signs is needed.

Bayside Council’s Master Plan needs to avoid the ‘consultant’ mentality and tone of Utopia, and ably mocked in Leunig’s ‘land of Knodd’.

* 2014

See a quadricopter view of the Beaumaris Concourse Car Show. This brief event worked well, and left no lasting effect behind it.

* 2010

ConcourseBushland’s rezoning to Public Park & Recreation Zone was in the Victoria Government Gazette on 11 February 2010.

• 2009

The Planning Minister rezoned the Concourse Bushland after Bayside City Council unanimously adopted a staff report  for that.

* 2008

BCS Inc. letter to Bayside Council was responded to by Council seeking Concourse Bushland as a Public Park & Recreation Zone.

* 2005

Special Meeting of Bayside Council resolved to seek a skateboard ramp site not on Concourse Green. See 2006 Concourse Plan.

* 2004

Cr Ken Beadle, a BCS Inc. member, successfully proposed the rezoning of the Concourse Green to Public Park & Recreation Zone.

* 2004

A public petition – with 1,140 signatures – convinced Bayside City Council to abandon its planned skateboard ramp on the Concourse Green.

* 2004

BCS Inc. call for protest at Bayside Council plan for a CONCRETE SKATEBOARD RAMP on the Concourse Green.

* 2003

BCS Inc. letter to councillors successfully sought rezoning of the Concourse Green, and raised the Concourse Bushland issue.

* 2002

A public petition to Bayside City Council, with 970 signatures, and a parking survey, started by Rose Allaway, successfully opposed using any of the quarter hectare Concourse Green for a CAR PARK. The proposal by a group of Concourse shopkeepers was for 58% of the Councourse Green to be converted into a car park.

* The prelude to and genesis of the Concourse is seen in the 1944 bushfire map and 1951 and 1963 aerial photographs of its location.