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Existing infrastructure such as trees, play spaces and the precinct’s hard-paved surface will be retained.<\/p>\n
The City’s CEO Andrew Cooney said the kicker is that the transformation will be able to happen promptly.<\/p>\n
“If this goes to plan and the council adopts the recommendation, we’ll work really quickly,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Our plan is to have this activated and up and running before spring (and) we don’t foresee massive disruption to businesses.<\/p>\n
“We won’t lose the trees, we won’t lose the big infrastructure in there.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“The road surface we believe will be strong enough.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“They’re the three parts we’ve tried to use,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This is an important signal back to the community and back to the business community and hopefully our potential and future tenants.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n