Can Bridge Mall have it all?

PLANS to revamp and revitalise the Bakery Hill precinct are a step closer with a design firm announced to take on the Bridge Mall part of the job.

Global urban design firm Hassell has been given the nod to lead the Bakery Hill Revitalisation Plan, which includes Bridge Mall, and they will be joined by local consultants PLOT Landscape Architecture and Cardno TGM.

Mark Haycox, principal at Hassell said he was looking forward to the opportunity to bring a different life to the area while acknowledging on the space’s history.

“We’re rapt, actually,” he said. “We’re building on the work that the City of Ballarat has been doing for a number of years now.

“We came forward with a response based on looking at the history, the stories, the narrative of all the different layers of cultural values associated with Ballarat.

“It’s always been a meeting place, a place where goods and services and ideas were exchanged right at the very heart of Ballarat’s European heritage, but before that it goes back millennia in terms of the natural and cultural values associated with traditional owners.”

Hassell was awarded the contract for the Bakery Hill project through a competitive design process that began late last year.

As part of that the firm had to incorporate some must haves in the project that included reopening Bridge Mall to traffic, and uncovering the Yarrowee River.

A further community consultation process will now take place and Mr Haycox said it would be a balancing act to incorporate the often-varied feedback from across the community.

“That’s the art of design,” he said. “That’s the game we play. Design is a process and a problem-solving tool.

“A successful project is based on broad base of support for a vision, a shared vision and that shared vision can only be enacted upon when there is that broad base of support.”

City of Ballarat mayor Cr Ben Taylor said the Bakery Hill precinct, and Bridge Mall especially, was primed for a rejuvenation.

Yet what form it would take he’ll leave up to the community feedback process.

“There’s still no locked in designs,” Cr Taylor said. “Hassell’s process was around their vision and their understanding of what could be seen here.

“Now the next stages are doing more consultation, and then we’ll get some more detailed design around what it’s going to look like because we can’t leave it as it is, we’ve heard that loud and clear from the community.”

The Bridge Mall Traders Association welcomed the announcement and the plans to renovate the area.

Spokesperson Shane Donnithorne has two retail spaces in the Mall. He said a revamp of the area was much needed, and his group had some ideas on what form that might take.

“We have been faced with a downturn in foot traffic in the Mall which has happened over the last five years,” he said.

“As an association we’re looking at ways of marketing the place as an event-based precinct.

“We’re positive and enthusiastic about working with the designer, the possibilities are endless.”

Council has planned to spend $14 million over two years on the project, with $4 million budgeted in 2020/21.

As a firm Hassell has undertaken projects across the country and the world including the Darling Harbour transformation in Sydney, the New Museum for Western Australia in Perth and the Resilient South City as part of the Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge in San Francisco, California.