Open Space Strategy
The City of Maribyrnong has over 150 open spaces, covering more than 307 hectares of land. A notable feature of the open space network is the diversity of spaces, ranging from large historical gardens to the natural values of the waterway corridors along the Maribyrnong River and Stony Creek. In addition there are a number of large, high quality sporting reserves and interspersed through the neighbourhoods are smaller parks and spaces.
The purpose of the Open Space Strategy is to provide a strategic direction for the future planning, provision, design and management of open space in the City of Maribyrnong from 2013 to 2031. The strategy quantifies and describes the existing open space network and identifies improvements to provision and quality of our open space.
5 Year Review
In 2020 Council conducted a 5 year review of the Open Space Strategy to identify what improvements have been completed, what actions are in progress, and what remains to be done from the Strategy. The Review is prepared in a short format (Addedum to the Strategy) that is an accessible summary of the Strategy.
Key achievements over the past five years include:
- Established three Small Local open spaces in Footscray and purchased the land for a future new Small Local open space in the Joseph Road Precinct.
- Purchased new Regional open space along the Maribyrnong River from Medway Golf Club to construct a new shared path link between the Maidstone and Braybrook.
- Undertaken major upgrades to 11 large Regional and Municipal open spaces across the City.
- Successfully completed 14 out of 16 very high and 11 out of 20 high priority actions to upgrade existing Neighbourhood, Local and Small Local open spaces.
- Through developer open space land contributions three new parks will be constructed in Beachley St, Braybrook; Hampstead Rd, Maribyrnong; and Walter St, Footscray.
- Successfully acquired 4.4 hectares of land for new open space across the municipality.
- Successfully incorporated the 5.7% developer contribution rate for open space into the Schedule to Clause 53.01 in the Maribyrnong Planning Scheme.