MORNINGTON Peninsula Shire councillors have endorsed officer’s two recommended options as potential sites for consolidated shire offices.
The two locations have been whittled down from seven slated for investigation at the council meeting on 21 November 2023. The locations are 35 Wannaeue Place, Rosebud and a combination of two Mornington locations; 2 Queen Street (the current Mornington office) and 5 Queen Street.
Removed from the recommended list are Waterloo Place Mornington, 90 Besgrove Street Rosebud (current Rosebud offices), 21 Marine Parade Hastings (current Hastings offices) and 350 Dunns Road Mornington (Civic Reserve). Council will now conduct further investigations and business case analysis to determine the preferred site option.
Davey Smith, from the shire’s programs and project management office told the 20 August meeting “we have looked at a whole range of different criteria and elements. We have looked at the what has the most potential in terms of opportunity creation, commercial partnership opportunity, through to staff retention and attraction”.
The move to consolidate offices comes as council adopts a new “four-tier” model for council centres and services. The first “tier” is the primary consolidated council office, the second, co-location sites such as libraries, the third, community “hubs” at various smaller-town locations and the fourth tier “hybrid working”.
The endorsement by councillors comes after the shire advertised earlier this year for “experienced contractors/firms” to be partners in a future build (Shire ‘consolidates’, The News 20/2/24). “We put out an expression of interest to the market to say is there anyone out there that might want to come and work with us,” Smith said. “Through that process [commercial development company] Quintessential put in a submission. “What they’ve offered is basically to work with us to look at different models other than the traditional model of council just designing and building ourselves and paying for it.”
Smith told councillors that could entail a commercial developer undertaking the build and leasing it back to the council, or allowing the shire to pay it off over time. “They certainly identified Mornington as having a significant commercial return; an opportunity for growth because of the property within Mornington,” he said.
Cr Susan Bissinger asked how the plan had changed “from being an exercise to consolidate everyone in the same place and, perhaps, sell off other properties [but] all of a sudden it’s turned into something designed for Google with all these spaces and stuff like that?” “I don’t understand where the disconnect was. I don’t understand how that happened. It doesn’t look like we’re downsizing. It actually looks like we’re expanding.”
“The model does appear to be more complex in the sense of that it is a four-tier model, but there is no intention for this to be more expensive than we originally sought out to do,” CEO John Baker said. “The reality is we are still moving from three main offices and consolidating that into one office. “This is why the business case is so important, because part of the work we’ll be undertaking is to explore the commercial opportunities as well. “And we’re very aware of the cost associated with something like this and very focused on the fact that this needs to save us money.”
Cr Anthony Marsh thought “people sometimes forget the resolution in front of us”. “It’s not to approve a particular building of any scale. It is to approve the concept of consolidation, which is a no brainer,” he said. “Having three offices post-covid makes no sense. The resolution in front of us purely says to do a business case on consolidating the three offices. Nothing more. We’re not approving designs for the Taj Mahal. “There were some comments before saying that this is a terrible idea. What’s the alternative? We just keep three old offices plugging away? It’s just an obvious thing that we need to do.”
First published in the Mornington News – 3 September 2024
