Green option

By Kath Gannaway
A $400,000 redevelopment of the Yarra Glen Bowling Club will go ahead … and two contentious gum trees will stay, under a compromise proposal by Yarra Ranges Council.
The club received a $350,000 grant from Melbourne Water under North-South Pipeline funding to build a second rink they say is needed to meet expanding membership, and to allow them to host finals competitions.
Under the club’s original planning application, two mature Sugar Gums and other vegetation were to be done away with to build a second green and provide adequate car parking.
Two alternative options drawn up by Yarra Ranges Council’s planning department made way for a third option put forward by Cr Jeanette McRae at the council meeting on 13 September.
The alternative motion, which was passed unanimously, will see the rink moved 6.6 metres away from the trees, and allowances made for car-parking.
Neighbouring resident Noel Buchanan was the sole objector to the original proposal, saying the trees crown the landscape and it would be a tragedy for the environment and amenity of the parkland in which the bowling club is located if they were removed.
“I strongly object to those trees ever being touched by human hands,” he told the councillors.
Yarra Glen Bowling Club representative Mark Brown said the club rejected the two options which, he said, the club had received just a couple of weeks before the meeting.
He said both plans were unworkable and would result in substantial cost increase and time delays which the club doesn’t have the financial capacity to cover.
He also said there would be issues of leaf-litter and the potential for root damage to the green if the trees were left.
Club chairman Peter Nelson told the Mail on the weekend the club was left with no choice now but to “make it work”.
“We’re happy that we can now go ahead, but disappointed that we didn’t know that the two trees were going to be such an issue, so that the club, instead of going down the original track in trying to get it put where we wanted to put it, could have organised something else,” he said.
“We have over 80 members and we have been trying to get this new green up for the last eight years.
“We’ve had hassles before because our green is not full size, so when it comes to finals we’re not able to play home finals,” he said.
He said the club had the resources to cover the difference in the Melbourne Water funding and the actual costs which had been pushed out from $380,000 to $410,000.
“We’re certainly hoping it won’t go up any further,” he said.