By Marcus Uhe
Every time Sandra Le drives past the demolished site of the Hampton Park Food Market, she wonders what could have been.
As the owner of that block of land at 65 Hallam Road, Ms Le chose to demolish the market in April 2019, with plans to transform the rundown precinct into a brand-new multi-level complex complete with 117 apartments, office space, carparking and retail stores.
A planning permit was granted in April 2019 by the City of Casey, giving her the green light to do-away with the old setup.
But the proposal was withdrawn by Ms Le after struggling to lease retail vacancies to ‘blue-chip’ tenants, and commercial viability concerns with the apartments, forcing a re-think of how to use the land.
In September 2020, Ms Le, in consultation with her developers, submitted an amended proposal, this time minus the residential component, but maintaining two levels featuring retail and office tenancies.
Feedback from the City of Casey suggested the site did not align with the council’s Hampton Park Central Development Plan, forcing her to withdraw the application.
It leaves Ms Le in an awkward position; with no plans approved, she’s struggling to find an anchor tenant who will commit to investing in her development, leaving the site, a prime piece of real estate in the area, in its current state of inertia.
Ms Le believes the council want her to commit to her original plan of building apartments, but as the landowner, she doesn’t see that as a valid investment.
“People who work at the council, they don’t have developers to deal with, I have to deal with that,” Ms Le said.
“And I’m not putting the blame on (the council), I’m just saying, from a developer’s point of view, if you can’t make project stack up, it’s just going to sit there.
“With the current market and the costs of construction, we can’t do it.
“I start doing the pre-sale and all that, and you know it’s going to cost you $300,000 to build something like that. If you don’t sell it for $500,000-600,000, why would you build it?
“It’s going to cost me $300,000 to build one apartment, and you tell me, can I sell it for $500,000 in Hampton Park? Probably not. People don’t think about that.”
Duncan Turner, Manager Statutory Planning and Building Services at the City of Casey, said the council had extended the time in which the permit must be commenced, after it was due to expire in April 2022, because the applicant had not commended works on the site.
He confirmed the misalignment with the Hampton Park Central Development Plan, but said the amended request was withdrawn before the council could rule it out on those grounds.
“The Hampton Park Central Development Plan provides a strong vision and development framework for how the activity centre should grow and develop,” Mr Turner said.
Ms Le’s investment in the precinct dates back more than 20 years, including acquiring the block of land in 2006.
She’s passionate about the location and suburb and wants to do right by her customers and feels that she has met the council’s requirements on multiple occasions, but fears a solution is out of reach, and is considering selling the land out of frustration and financial circumstances.
“It’s very frustrating. The amount of money I’ve spent, every time, to do a report is $20,000-30,000. Traffic engineers, waste, we need a report for each one of them. Do you think that every time they want me to make a change that I don’t have to pay money?
“I’m probably going to lose (money) in the end because I’ve probably spent a million on planning over the years.
“I’m trying to find every opportunity to build something there.
“I can’t afford to spend another year doing all this work for the council to reject it.”
