Preferred character statement

This precinct is the commercial core of the Activity Centre and the preferred location for convenience and comparison shopping, and some professional services. Through the introduction of an employment anchor, it will hum with people creating higher footfall and improving the viability of the shops. The Town Square and Commercial Place will form a ‘Food Precinct’, a place to meet, rest, eat and play. The existing dispersed car parking will be decked into mixed use buildings with active frontages at the ground floor and residents above. Space will retained in the commercial core to continue the Eltham Farmer’s Market. Main Road creates an opportunity for higher density development that marks the entry to the town centre.

Objectives

• To encourage retail activity.

• To support the expansion of experiential retail, dining and entertainment, growing the night time economy.

• To encourage mixed use developments with office and residential uses at the upper levels.

• To establish a major employment anchor.

• To provide more employment opportunities by intensifying and expanding the range of commercial activities, particularly of office development.

• To promote active and accessible street frontages.

• To encourage a lively and people-based centre, accommodating a wide variety of place based activities.

• To provide a safe, attractive, accessible and convenient town centre.

• To encourage buildings that present a cohesive appearance which relates to the current modest scale of the precinct, emphasises key entrances to the town centre and reflects the Eltham form and character.

• To ensure that streets throughout the area will be a focus for pedestrian activity and the buildings will relate positively to the public realm.

• To create a transition in uses and built form scale between the town centre and the nearby residential precinct.

• To maintain appropriate levels of solar access to existing and proposed public spaces.

• To ensure that new development does not unreasonably interrupt the canopy ridge line of Eltham and views available to the west.

• To provide pedestrian links between the Town Square and Main Road.

• To establish the commercial core as a ‘pedestrian priority area’ where various accessible seating options are also incorporated.

• To create better pedestrian connectivity between the eastern and western sides of the Main Road and onwards to the train station.

• To encourage traffic calming measures to main road to improve conditions for pedestrians and cyclists.

Strategies

• Encourage retail development in Pryor Street, Commercial Place, Arthur Street and Dudley Street.

• Encourage niche restaurants and active uses around the Town Square and along Commercial Place between Luck and Arthur Streets.

• Develop Commercial Place as a ‘Food Street’ whereby local artisanal food products are showcased.

• Encourage uses that extend the hours of activity of the Activity Centre, develop a night economy and strengthen its function as a place for living and working at street level.

• Deliver a vertical mix of land uses through facilitating the use of shop tops for office, residential and other commercial uses.

• Encourage the development of offices throughout the precinct, particularly on sites abutting the west side of the Circulatory Road.

• Encourage small shops and other retail activities at ground level.

• Investigate potential sites for an anchor employer, such as an education, health or public administration anchor.

• Encourage the redevelopment of large shopping centres and car parks to the east with buildings built to the street edges, with car parking decked into the building or sleeved with other uses that provide active frontages.

• Enhance the public realm with seating, shade trees and space for outdoor eating.

• Investigate the opportunity for a public space/ plaza at 1A Pryor Street, creating further space for place activation along Commercial Place, using the following measures to retain acceptable traffic flow within vicinity of the plaza:

- Installing traffic signals on Main Road at the junction of Luck Street and Arthur Street to provide sufficient gaps in the flow of traffic on Main Road to allow relatively easy egress of traffic from Pryor Street, and thereby providing a clear alternative to using Commercial Place to access Main Road;

- Closing off Commercial Place to traffic at the Pryor Street end, whilst maintaining parking with access off Luck Street; or

- Leaving Commercial Place one way, but reduce the traffic speed to 20kph with rough surface strips and raised platforms to give priority to pedestrians.

• Investigate partial pedestrianisation of Commercial Place between Luck Street and Pryor Street.

• Provide bike and mobility scooter parking at highly frequented facilities such as supermarkets.

• Liaise with DoT to advocate for the implementation of on-road cycle lanes on Main Road.

Design Guidelines

• Buildings fronting Main Road, Pryor Street, Arthur Street and Commercial Place should:

- Be designed with active frontages to the street at ground level including facade articulation, inclusions of windows and entries.

- Provide 65-80% clear glazing (non-reflective) between a height of 0.5m and 2.4m above the footpath offering unobstructed views into the building.

- Provide pedestrian entries at least every 15m.

- Provide continuous weather protection (such as cantilevered canopies/ verandahs) over footpaths, subject to protecting existing tree canopies.

- Include a street wall that includes both a fine grain and strong vertical articulation to deliver visual interest.

- Provide upper levels that are articulated with building recesses and balcony treatments.

• Buildings on the corners of Dudley Street and Main Road and Luck Street and Main Road should be of high architectural quality with expressed corner building forms to create a sense of entry into this precinct.

• High density mixed use developments should provide basement or podium car parking sleeved with other uses that provide active frontages.

• Blank walls are to be avoided.

• Buildings on corner allotments should address both street frontages with shop front windows at street level.

• Design new buildings with the ground floor located responding to the natural ground level (NGL) to promote a strong connection with the public street space and ensure access to all.

• The scale of built from should respond to the narrowness of Commercial Place, ensuring upper levels are sufficiently setback.

• Redevelopment of properties fronting Main Road between Arthur Street and Luck Street will require basement access from the side street, rather than Commercial Place.

• Roof lines should be flat or have a modest pitch, in keeping with the existing character.

• The building materiality should consist of a mix of timber, stone, mudbrick (or textured render), steel, glass and other natural materials and colours that blend in with the natural environment/ native vegetation. The palette of materials may also include recycled, recyclable and/ or renewable materials and elements.

Refer to the Design Guidelines at Section 6.0 for interface setback requirements.