Hannah Hammoud
Whittlesea council has endorsed the final report for the Thomastown and Lalor Place Framework which presents a series of opportunities to improve both suburbs over time.
The framework builds on existing strategies and policies, and identifies future priority projects and activities that will help drive positive change in both Thomastown and Lalor.
The framework outlines a vision, themes, key focus areas and place shaping opportunities to locally translate Whittlesea’s 2040 goals across Thomastown and Lalor.
Council’s endorsement follows a history of extensive changes to the framework within the last three years, including three rounds of community engagement, over 500 community contributions and three versions of the framework.
A draft was endorsed by council in October 2022 and was then presented to the community in November where they were asked to gauge their level of support for the draft, prioritise themes and opportunities for the framework and provide general feedback.
Whittlesea council’s Urban Design and Transport Manager, Arashdeep Singh said that the community overwhelmingly supported the framework.
“The framework will influence councils future projects, timelines and budgets to make Thomastown and Lalor a place for everyone,” he said.
Key opportunities that the community supported were:
– Creating greener spaces by naturalising Edgars Creek as a central green spine to improve connections within the Edgars Creek Corridor.
– Improve High Street general connectivity.
– Improve East West connections by prioritising and connecting disjointed key pedestrian and cycling routes.
– Strengthen public transport accessibility.
Administrator Christian Zahra acknowledged the extensive community participation that contributed to delivering the finalised framework.
“I’m sure every single one of those contributions has improved the final product that we’re seeing today,” he said.
“These [suburbs] are already great places, and fantastic communities, but these types of important council strategic planning documents provide a framework to continue to make them liveable into the future.”
