Moonee Valley flush with development activity

Moonee Valley flush with development activity
Mark BaljakJuly 31, 2016

City of Moonee Valley's two main drivers, Essendon and Moonee Ponds, continue to bubble along in terms of apartment development.

Growland's 343-349 Ascot Vale Road has been joined at planning by CBD Development Group's 1144 Mt Alexander Road. These recently submitted applications are set to add hundreds of new apartments to Moonee Ponds and Essendon respectively, with the latter to also house a full size Coles supermarket and commercial space.

Combined with Caydon's phase 2 of the former Readings site, the three shape as City of Moonee Valley's three most notable projects at planning.

The Readings or Moonee Ponds Market site now resembles a construction site with LU Simon initiating works during July on the first phase of the massive residential development which will yield in excess of 600 apartments. Of interest is phase 2 of the development which if approved will deliver Moonee Ponds its tallest building.

Moonee Valley flush with development activity
Podium perspective of Caydon's Moonee Ponds tallest. Planning image: Fender Katsalidis

A fair proportion of the 691 dwellings earmarked for phase 2 are found within a proposed 34 level tower designed by Fender Katsalidis Architects. At 107 metres it would comfortably surpass Mondo Tower's 17 levels to become Moonee Ponds' tallest building. See more renders on the forum.

Diagonally opposite the Readings development, The Moloney Group's 14 level apartment project at 33 Hall Street is at marketing and poised to deliver Moonee Ponds another high-rise.

Supporting these larger projects is a squad of medium and smaller apartment developments. 28-30 Young Street's construction tender recently closed as did Parkside's, while a host of additional projects such as Esse, Kin, The Alexander, MOPO and Alexa are under construction.

Moonee Valley flush with development activity
Alexa and a nearly complete Leake Street

From a sales perspective, two additional projects are poised to be offered to the public.

Curve Apartments on Keilor Road is a Rothelowman-designed low-rise development on what was once a service station. While the final configuration is unknown, planning for the project envisaged 74 apartments.

Also set to launch is Alexandria at 852 Mt Alexander Road. Perched above Essendon Junction, Alexandria is an 11 Dimensions-designed 8 level apartment project with near on 60 apartments included. With the finishing touches currently being applied to the display, Alexandria is one of 6 apartment projects surrounding Essendon Station.

The largest of these is Revel Development Group's 13-21 Russell Street which in its submitted version included 99 dwellings. The project was given the green light by VCAT earlier this year.

urban.com.au's Project Database has Mooneey Valley's major apartment centres containing the following number of active apartments: Essendon North with 370, Essendon with 666 and Moonee Ponds with a substantial 2,242.

Moonee Valley flush with development activity
Keilor Road's Curve. Image: curveessendon.com.au

Mark Baljak

Mark Baljak was a co-founder of Urban.com.au. He passed away on Thursday 8th of November 2018 after a battle with cancer. He was 37. Mark was a keen traveller, having visited all six permanently-inhabited continents and had a love of craft beer. One of his biggest passions was observing the change that has occurred in Melbourne over the past two decades. In that time he built an enormous library of photos, all taken by him, which tracked the progress of construction on building sites from across metropolitan Melbourne.

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