By Mikayla van Loon
After what has been nearly two decades of advocacy to improve Mount Evelyn’s Morrison Reserve, the next phase of planning has been approved by the council.
Yarra Ranges councillors accepted the master plan for the reserve on Tuesday 28 May, an exciting moment for Cr Tim Heenan.
“I started this journey on trying to take what was a pretty dilapidated area in Mount Evelyn all those years ago was Brendan Dixon, who was connected with the Yarra Ranges Athletics Centre to make it better for the children, to make it better for the sporting clubs,” he said.
“There was an enormous amount of vandalism…I believe police would come and visit the car park because of all the wheelies that were being done there and some very dangerous people and inconsiderate people chose to drive their four wheel drives down on the athletics ground.”
Cr Heenan said while there had been immense progress in improving the reserve since 2006, these next stages would boost the safety, connection and recreation for the community.
“The creation of youth activation space incorporating an upgraded district level play space, social spaces, informal active recreation opportunities and a bike park offering a range of skill development opportunities for beginner to advanced riders,” he said.
“It talks about improvements to the path network for walking, dog walking, fitness and cross country running activities which is going to be vitally important to Yarra Ranges Athletics. Upgrades to the netball and tennis courts and club rooms, more car parking improvements.”
The 15 year master plan also supports “advocacy for the construction of a four court stadium for basketball but also for multi use at Yarra Hills Secondary College”.
With just the one athletics facility in the shire, Cr Heenan said ensuring it has the upgrades it needs to cater to the participants who travel far and wide would be essential moving forward, as well as providing a multi use and functional recreation facility.
“There’s so much that we’re going to be able to do now up at Morrison Reserve over the next couple of years. It’s just wonderful,” he said.
“It’s also important it’s got a family friendly area adjacent to the community house up the top there.”
Cr Richard Higgins supported the motion to approve and said the efforts of both Cr Heenan and the planning team had finally come to fruition.
“The people of Mount Evelyn and the rest of the shire will benefit greatly from your endeavours.
“[I just look at the] master plan and to me it says all these 25 things are going to happen at a huge parcel of land over, admittedly a couple of years which is probably good staging, and the end result is going to be a precinct…that is going to benefit everybody and be the envy I would suggest of many other councils and areas.”
Congratulating Cr Heenan for his “persistence over all that time”, Cr Len Cox said the master plan would ensure Morrison Reserve would become “a first class reserve”.
Gaining extensive engagement from the community about the plan and what was needed in the upgrade works, Cr Johanna Skelton was a really valuable resource in forming the plan.
“I was very thankful for the 250 people plus that were involved in the engagement. They really brought up that the majority are actually using it for their walking and walking the dog and socialising and all the kinds of nonspecific groups,” she said.
“It’s great to see that things like connection paths are just as important as the more formal club use facilities.”
The master plan was passed unanimously.
