It's Full Steam Ahead For The Folk Of Frankston
The Age
Tuesday July 6, 1993
The past decade has been good to Frankston and, if the council has its way, the next decade will be even better. JEANNE-MARIE CILENTO reports on the booming suburb that began as a fishing village.
DESPITE one of the highest unemployment rates in Victoria, the bayside city of Frankston is enjoying a renaissance unlike anything occurring elsewhere in Melbourne.
Frankston's central business district is being rejuvenated by a large- scale program of replanning and revitalising that started a decade ago.
A major project that was completed in 1991 was Quayside, an airy, glass-roofed shopping complex that pulled the former dispersed shopping areas into a bustling centre. Last year, five million people passed through its doors and it recorded a turnover of $90 million.
Based on annual turnover figures per square metre, Quayside leads giant shopping centres such as Melbourne Central and Southland.
Other developments recently completed include a Transit Interchange that links all public transport, several new car-parking facilities and a ring road that has re-routed traffic away from the pedestrian- oriented CBD.
The most ambitious _ and controversial _ project is a $14 million theatre and library complex designed by architect Daryl Jackson.
Foundations for the three-level building are just being dug and the project is expected to be finished next year.
Ms Cathy Dale, the council's corporate projects manager, says: ``Frankston was a bit of a rundown sort of place in the early '80s.
The revitalisation of the CBD really needed to happen if Frankston was to survive as the regional centre for the Peninsula and not be overtaken by places such as Chadstone and Southland.
Ms Dale says the city has passed through rapid residential and commercial growth and ``now we need a healing process, a time to get all these major developments settled. The theatre will be the focus of the cultural life of the city _ an area that so far has been lacking," she says.
According to historian Michael Jones, who wrote `Frankston _ Resort to City' in 1989, Frankston has ``never quite been able to decide whether it is a country town servicing its hinterland, a pleasure resort, a dormitory suburb for Melbourne, the gateway to the Mornington Peninsula or a self-contained city".
A master plan the council is preparing for public display shows a redevelopment that would reorient the city towards the bay and create a promenade along the lines of Southbank. Together with the current projects, this suggests Frankston's future as a self-sufficient regional centre is secure.
Established in 1854, Frankston began as a small fishing village and fishing remained the major industry for decades. Mr Jones says early social life was focused on Kananook Creek and the bush along its banks, rather than the beach.
This was partly due to the heavy bathing outfits that made swimming in the Victorian era a complex enterprise. Multiple drownings from boats that foundered in Port Philip Bay also deterred people from boating and bathing.
The early reluctance to fully utilise the bay can be seen in the stubborn way much of the central city has turned its back on the sea.
The first stretch of shops that line the Nepean Highway almost completely obscure the bay, and the bigger shopping, business and entertainment centres are also located inland.
Mr Jones writes that the flatness of the land between Frankston and Melbourne, 42 kilometres away, was the reason for the early rail link built in 1882. ``Frankston boomed as a resort from the 1890s because busy Melbourne residents could travel there in about an hour-and-a- half by train".
It remained a relatively small seaside holiday spot up until the mid- 20th Century when only 7000 people lived there. A decade later, the population had nearly quadrupled to more than 25,000.
Huge subdivisions and residential building programs in the 1960s and '70s, one of the largest being Karingal, contributed to the growth so that today Frankston is a city of 90,000.
The housing estates have provided the stock that has kept the residential real estate market going. Local agent Mr Neville Frost, of Frost First National, says the market ``has been tough in all areas on the Peninsula and while the buyers are there they are looking for very good value".
Although the Olivers Hill area has million-dollar properties, Frankston has some of the cheapest houses available in Melbourne, with the lower end of the market enjoying a small resurgence. Mr Frost says houses that were selling for $130,000 in the late '80s can now be bought for around $85,000.
Mr John McCready, of Campbell Smith, says activity has increased at the bottom end of the market _ in the $80,000-$90,000 range _ and that local banks report an increase in housing loans. These prices would provide a brick-veneer house less than 25 years old, with three bedrooms and including a garage.
There is also a secondary stage, Mr McCready says, where people are selling their first home to buy in the $100,000-$120,000 range. ``We are not seeing a price increase but an increase in turnover.
© 1993 The Age