Apartment Overload

The Capitol Grand proposal, featuring 457 apartments, located on the corner of Toorak Rd and Chapel St, was approved by VCAT on 29^th June 2015. It is a case study of a proposal that shouldn’t have been approved in its current form. The former Fun Factory site is part of the Forrest Hill precinct, an area bound by specific planning guidelines set out by Stonnington City Council. Since these guidelines were actively introduced by Stonnington in 2009, we have seen an influx of high rise apartment blocks along Chapel St between Toorak Rd and Alexandra Ave. If that is the case then, who has approved these and what’s the problem with another apartment block?

Before I proceed, it should be noted that Stonnington along with various residents affected by the Capitol Grand objected the proposal to VCAT. Their first concern was the manifestly ‘excessive height’ proposed. The curvaceous design of The Capitol Grand by Bates Smart features two primary masses, the first being the Toorak Rd facing side at a height of 51 metres, and the Chapel St façade at a height of 184 metres. To give some context to 184 metres, the Vogue apartment blocks, currently the highest in the area stands at 125 metres high or 67% of The Capitol, and the recently completed Avenue apartments on the corner of Chapel St and Alexandra Ave, stands at 61 metres high or 33% of the Capitol.

New Build.

What is particularly imposing about The Capitol however, is the lack of setbacks prescribed and the bearing this has on immediate context. Whilst the 50 storey tower is not directly on the corner of Chapel St and Toorak Rd, pedestrians walking towards the Yarra River along Chapel St will still be walking past 184 metres of vertical glazing and the subsequent shadowing this will place over the area. The proposed double storey podium also does little to mask the dominance of the towering masses above. VCAT have ultimately defended the height by describing the building as ‘sculptured’, ‘slender’, and as an ‘icon’.

On behalf of the applicant (Capitol Grand), notable architect Dr Graeme Gunn stated that the increased height of the building compared with medium heights of the surrounding buildings responded as an architectural landmark. This flawed logic suggests we keep going up across the city so that new buildings will continue to stand out. It is also disconcerting that VCAT have once again used the meaningless word iconic. As you read this, I invite you to stop for a moment and think of five ‘icons’ in Melbourne. Saying that a building is iconic is a fancy way of giving it license to be autonomous.

Construction on the up.

David Ansen, South Yarra Station, Flickr

And what does autonomy mean for infrastructure? It means an unacceptable scenario where a building is placed, not stitched into an urban fabric that creates a chain of problems. 553 basement car parking spaces have been approved in the Capitol Grand or a rate of 1.09 spaces per dwelling, based on the various allocations of one and two car park spaces in accordance with apartment sizes. This rate sits significantly above Stonnington’s recommendation of 0.66 spaces per dwelling. VCAT have said that ‘peak hour traffic generation is likely to be moderated due to the proximity of public transport, the location within an activity centre, as well as the prevailing levels of traffic congestion in the area.’ In short, VCAT are having their cake and eating it too by predicting more sustainable transport solutions whilst facilitating proposals that encourage more unsustainable transport solutions.

The Capitol proposal will see the widening of its rear st, Almeida Crescent, for two way traffic, but does this alleviate or create another cumulative artery spilling onto Toorak Rd? Further, doing this also goes against the Forrest Hill Precinct guidelines to widen footpaths in the area due to a growing population. For a proposal that is nearly double in size to surrounding precedents, it is alarming that VCAT haven’t addressed other infrastructure services in their overall approval, including a much needed upgrade to South Yarra station. Surely this should be a public-private agreement with all stakeholders. By contrast, VCAT’s short term thinking has led to the Forrest Hill precinct becoming so dense, that the only open space left will be the Woodfull Miller oval at Melbourne High School, which is only accessible to the school. It is only a matter of time before the community feels the effects from a lack of public space caused by autonomous buildings, and by then it will be too late to incorporate these amenities into a succinct master plan. It is simply a missed opportunity to not work with developers in providing greater engagement of their proposals within the community, and it seems in this instance that any knee-jerk infrastructural upgrades will come at a cost to the local rate payer. In the case of this proposal, VCAT have let us down.

Long after Charlize Theron’s glitzy three million dollar promotion of the Capitol Grand, there’ll be a resident walking along the shaded cracked narrow pavement on Almeida Crescent, looking across to a grid locked Toorak Rd. The true cost of luxury it seems, hasn’t been accounted for yet.

Words: Jack Dowling