Proposed planning changes to the Queen Victoria Market precinct will remove height restrictions in the area, delivering windfall profits of up to 25 per cent to the City of Melbourne and other landowners, agents estimate.
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Last year, the City of Melbourne bought the 6462-square-metre Munro site, next to the Queen Victoria Market, on the corner of Queen and Therry streets, paying $76 million.
As part of a new plan for the Queen Victoria Market, the council has proposed rezoning the market, its car parks and surrounding buildings to Capital City Zone 1 to Public Use Zone (PUZ7) and the car park to Public Park and Recreation Zone (PPRZ).
Savills Australia director Clinton Baxter said the change could deliver a significant uplift in values of properties within the Queen Victoria Market precinct.
"Removing height restrictions could lift the Munro site's value above $100 million," Mr Baxter said.
The City of Melbourne's Amendment C245 removes a clause that ensured lower buildings existed in the area, creating a buffer between the CBD's Hoddle Grid and the surrounding suburbs of Carlton and North and West Melbourne.
Melbourne Heritage Action vice-president Rohan Storey said some of the height limits in the area had already been ignored by the former planning minister Matthew Guy's approval of several towers.
"But this is a big about-turn from the old planning scheme," Mr Storey said.
Height controls will be removed and replaced with mandatory street frontage heights, with taller buildings to be set back a minimum of 10 metres from the front, and tower spacing controls.
MCC lord mayor Robert Doyle said: "What we've had up until now are discretionary height limits that have created a sort of bowl effect, with relatively low-rise development around the market. At the moment you kind of just dribble into the market from all sides and that is exacerbated by some poor streetscapes.
"We want to see the city come up to the edge of the market so that the market becomes embedded in City North, with the city coming right up to the market and a clean edge between the city and the market."
An MCC spokesman said the proposed changes were part of the council's original development plan, which it issued before it bought the Munro site.
