City aims to open mall to traffic in mere months

The City of Greater Bendigo has announced its plans for Hargreaves Mall to be opened to traffic by September on a permanent basis.

It has been made clear that this will certainly not be a trial.

A one-way, laneway-style thoroughfare on the mall’s Kilians Walk side will allow vehicles to enter it from Mitchell Street and exit via Williamson Street.

Significantly, no major works will be involved thanks to the route’s design.

The mall will be classified as a pedestrian and cycle-friendly 10 km/h zone with 12 car parks plus a delivery bay to be installed.

Removable bollards will allow the new passageway to be closed as required.

Existing infrastructure such as trees, play spaces and the precinct’s hard-paved surface will be retained.

The City’s CEO Andrew Cooney said the kicker is that the transformation will be able to happen promptly.

“If this goes to plan and the council adopts the recommendation, we’ll work really quickly,” he said.

“Our plan is to have this activated and up and running before spring (and) we don’t foresee massive disruption to businesses.

“We won’t lose the trees, we won’t lose the big infrastructure in there.

“We’ll fence the play space, which is really important, we’ll still be able to run events on the non-vehicle side, and if we want to run events in the whole precinct we’ll be able to put those bollards back up.

“The road surface we believe will be strong enough.”

Cooney re-emphasised that the design has been developed in a way that it will be relatively low cost, very high quality, but low disruption.

“They’re the three parts we’ve tried to use,” he said.

“This is an important signal back to the community and back to the business community and hopefully our potential and future tenants.”