Wyndham council has put developers on notice that it will not take over the running of big-scale attractions in new estates once the going gets tough.
Councillor Mia Shaw said she was increasingly concerned by the emerging problem of developers building grandiose community assets and then handballing the management to an owners’ corporation.
“If you look around ours and other growth areas, it seems large developers are building regional-scale, or non-local-scale assets, purely to drive up sales in their estate. Some might say this is fair and is only market forces at play, but stand back and think about the consequences,” she said.
“Think about the pirate ship incident [in Point Cook], and now this one [at Ecoville].
“Are the competitive urges of developers in our growth areas leading to legacy assets that are poorly designed and unsafe?
“I think there is evidence this might be the case, and perhaps we need to be having discussions with the Victorian Planning Authority about this emerging trend in the future.”
Cr Shaw’s comments arose during a recent debate where the council rebuffed a request from the Ecoville owners corporation to take ownership of Ecoville Park and fix up the site following more than 18 months of vandalism, crime and anti-social behaviour.
Fellow councillor Kim McAliney, who was one of the councillors to vote against the proposal, said that accepting the offer would have set a dangerous precedent “for similar owner corporations who may get the impression that council will bail them out when they no longer have the interest in taking care of their common property”.
On the flip side, councillor Josh Gilligan said an exception should have been made where Ecoville was concerned.
“What about Jubilee, where they’re going to build an aquatics centre … are we saying if that goes belly-up, we’re going to leave that community completely on their own?” he said.
“Sometimes, you do have to bail out situations such as this one. It is in the community interest to do so.”
