All funding for construction of new car parking in Ballarat's Central Business District is fully accounted for.
The City of Ballarat has been working with Regional Development Victoria on two separate funding streams to facilitate additional car parking:
- The CBD Car Parking Action Plan, a strategy for parking across 110 precincts in the City of Ballarat, adopted by Council in 2016.
- The Ballarat Regional Car Parks fund, a State Government commitment to delivering 1000 additional free spaces in Ballarat.
The City of Ballarat has received $2 million from Regional Development Victoria between 2018 and 2022 to deliver 1000 car spaces in the CBD as part of the CBD Car Parking Action Plan. This funding was a result of the State Government announcement of the GovHub development and a commitment to work with the City of Ballarat to improve CBD car parking and offset the loss of 275 spaces at the Civic Hall site.
The Creswick Road car park, which has 280 spaces, cost $850,000.
The City of Ballarat, under the CBD Car Parking Action Plan funding agreement delivered the following car spaces at:
- Eastern Oval upgrade, 176 off-street car parks ($428,000 State funding)
- Creswick Road upgrade, 114 formalised on-street car parks ($263,000 State funding)
- Doveton Crescent from Lydiard Street to Doveton Street North, Soldiers Hill, additional 42 formalised on-street car parks ($209,000 State funding)
These projects approved by the State Government have been delivered for a total cost of $1.75 million.
Originally the City of Ballarat's intention, in agreeance with the State Government, was to deliver remaining car park formalisation throughout the Soldiers Hill precinct. However, following community consultation and overwhelming feedback that the works were not needed nor warranted it was decided to remove the majority of Soldiers Hill from this process and works were only undertaken in Doveton Crescent which was recognised as a critical location for upgrade works.
The City of Ballarat received approval from Regional Development Victoria for a variation of the remaining $250,000 of the original $2 million in funding. This has now been reallocated to other works including the Creswick Road roundabout upgrade and accessibility works alongside the railway line leading through to Market Street.
In August 2020 Council also resolved to contribute a sum of $750,000 to car parking upgrades as identified within the Car Parking Action Plan. Of this sum, $113,000 of City of Ballarat budget has been expended and this contribution relates to tree protection and roads works:
- Creswick Road upgrade ($32,000 City of Ballarat funded)
- Doveton Crescent from Lydiard Street to Doveton Street North, ($81,000 City of Ballarat funded)
The remaining allocated $637,000 remains in the infrastructure and assets capital budget program for works to formalise road reserves, car parks and tree protection in the identified CBD car parking precincts.
Separate to the Car Parking Action Plan funding, the State Government's Regional Car Parks Fund will deliver 1,000 free car park spaces in Ballarat to meet growing demand.
In July 2021 three locations were announced for the construction of approximately 150 new free spaces:
Construction of an additional 65 all-day free spaces at White Flat oval car park was completed April 2022, with the project costing $573,000.
Works are underway on 35 on-street timed free spaces in a redeveloped Market Street close to GovHub and Ballarat's library.
The cost of this project is $750,000 and is expected to be completed by November 2022.
Both these sites are City of Ballarat assets.
The final of the three sites is Havelock Street at the Eastern Oval precinct (Crown Land committee of management by City of Ballarat) for 50 new all-day free spaces at a cost of $435,000. Work has commenced on this site with works expected to be complete by late 2022.
These three projects were entirely funded by State Government.
Regional Development Victoria is continuing feasibility work on three other potential locations being:
- an additional 300-400 spaces by adding three to four levels to Ballarat Base Hospital's Mair Street multi-level car park
- a new multi-level car park on the Armstrong Street side of Federation University's SMB campus
- a new multi-level car park of up to 300 additional free spaces south of Little Bridge Street, as part of a major staged upgrade of the Bakery Hill precinct supporting the city's shopping precinct
The final report from the feasibility work will determine whether works will occur in these locations and any associated cost and agreements will be determined at this point.
It is expected feasibility work would be complete by the end of 2022.
Regional Development Victoria encourages residents to visit www.rdv.vic.gov.au to keep updated on the Regional Car Parks Fund projects.
