Readers of the proposed site brief may experience déjà vu: the documentation is strikingly similar to the pre-COVID version that attracted only one serious response, which ultimately failed to deliver even a tiny fraction of what was promised.
After 10 years in the making, and after burning through at least $2 million in ratepayer funds, council threw in the towel in April 2025 and abandoned its $160 million deal with Australian Marina Development Corporation (AMDC). This allowed AMDC to retain an operating lease until September 2028, keeping the marina afloat while council considered its options.
We are now at the first stage of finding a new lessee to take over in late 2028.
Rinse and repeat cycle
The key differences between the former site brief and the proposed new version are three changes intended to ‘maximise the commercial development potential of the site’:
> deleting a 100-person venue for the volunteer coast guard
> deleting a bridge from the lighthouse to Skatepark Reserve
> retaining the petrol station.
The site area, heritage constraints and use restrictions remain unchanged, most importantly ruling out residential or hotel development. The brief still calls for a working marina with hospitality and service facilities, along with greater public access to the site, including the bayside strip up to the lighthouse.
Sources familiar with the previous lease and negotiations have told TWiSK that the bridge was little more than wishful thinking, and that the petrol station was the site’s ‘not-so-secret cash cow’.
So yes, the site brief is more commercially favourable — but is it different enough to produce a different result, or any result at all? Or is Council over-egging the task by bundling the whole precinct together and outsourcing it as a job lot? What might happen if the brief were limited to improving the marina first, and building from there?
Look north and south of the marina and you will find a litany of unfinished, half-done or painfully slow ‘grand’ plans: the St Kilda foreshore promenade, unfinished; the St Kilda Triangle, in extended limbo; The Vineyard, stuck in rinse and repeat; the St Kilda Live Music Precinct, remember that; and the Elwood Foreshore, still awaiting state funding.
Big questions remain unanswered
- Of all the issues facing Port Phillip, and St Kilda in particular, who is arguing that this should be a priority?
- Without a public review of the previous process, especially the failure to monitor the lack of progress, how can the public be reassured that this process will be any different?
- Why is there no mention of the C-word: contamination — both soil and water? In 2025, council cited “continued uncertainty with historical soil contamination across the site” as one of the factors contributing to the failure.
- Lastly, here is a question TWiSK posed in 2025:
“Despite the hype, despite the promised investment, despite the location and despite the massive footprint, why can’t TWiSK find anyone who cares about this failure? This project has sunk without a trace, and nobody seems to care.”
