Organisation:

Affected property:

856

Paul Spizzirri

Yarraleen Cricket Club Inc

Hard copy submission - see attached

Attachment 1:

Comments:

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Submission Cover SheetNorth East Link Project EES IAC

Attachment 2:

Attachment 3:

YARRALEEN CRICKET CLUB Inc

NORTH EAST LINK

LOCAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Memorandum from the Yarraleen Committee of Management

Wednesday 7th June 2019

RE: The Committee’s Comments on the NEL Project

To whom it may concern, The Yarraleen Cricket Club is a vibrant and active community of cricket enthusiasts based in the Bulleen Park Precinct. This Committee of Management, which represents this community, has prepared the following briefing document to assist with the planning and implementation phases of this project. While our membership and committee is diverse in skills, culture and abilities, we do not offer this commentary with any expectation that it will meet any of the robust design considerations necessary for a project of this scale. We provide this submission with a solid understanding of our club, our membership and our broader community and it is our hope that this knowledge brings great value to this discussion through the opinions outlined in this document. We appreciate the opportunity to participate in this definition phase of the project and we look forward to seeing a positive transformation to the Bulleen Park precinct through this project.

Sincerely Yours Yarraleen Committee of Management

Overview As a club, we believe that the North East Link Project (NELP) will bring great benefit to the local community and Melbourne as a City. In dealing with traffic congestion and opening up new opportunities to traverse the city in record times, it will undoubtedly support employment growth and reduce travel times for locals and others passing through our community alike. We believe that this project will be transformative bringing a unique opportunity for review and improvement to the precinct; one which the club is embracing. The challenges of remaining current / up-to-date are significant for a small club. For some matters, the impact of change is not only hard to reconcile but also difficult to achieve at the Club level given the reality of limited resources and competing priorities. With a project of this scale and with diligent planning, there is a real opportunity to deliver an outcome that is both equitable and consistent with the best design principles of the day. We believe that a vision for this precinct should include the following concepts

● Bulleen Park is an asset under development and it should realise true growth in human social capital both during the construction phase and by the end of the project

● This project should not reduce the environmental amenity of the precinct Of course, the Committee also recognises that this project will challenge the concept of service delivery over an extended construction window (~5 years). This will bring unique challenges to the normal operation of the precinct and it is a story that we believe needs to be well communicated as it has the potential to marginalise our current and future membership, significantly disadvantaging or even potentially bringing an end to our Club. This may be one of the most significant impacts of this project to team based sports which is why we will discuss this aspect in further detail.

Yarraleen History

Established 1968  

Yarraleen Cricket Club is a grass roots, family friendly, community-based sporting club focussed on delivering both junior and senior development and playing programs within the Box Hill Reporter and Eastern Cricket Districts. We are now a club of 50 years and we can celebrate our heritage, cultural diversity, environment, youth focus and the engagement of our members. Yarraleen is a club with culture. It is a club where our members and competitors never go hungry with parents and friends helping out on the BBQ. We are a club nestled within beautiful parklands with a local flavour that makes this club unique and distinctive. We have a sense of identity that we cherish and want to grow. As a cricket club, Yarraleen is also serious about the game and we have been actively growing our club profile in the following strategic areas

● Developing a high performing 1st Eleven team to compete at the Shield level of competition

● Building the future foundations of the Club through a strong and continuing community of juniors who bring with them families and friends

● Maintaining competitive seniors teams which include a junior development program and social seniors team

● Continuing linkages to our club and community through our Veterans teams

● Engaging with the high profile T20 ‘Big Bash” style game

Club Demographics Yarraleen is comprised of the following playing cohorts ……

Juniors : ● Woolworths Cricket Blast ● Under 10’s ● Under 12’s ● Under 14’s ● Under 16’s Seniors : ● 1st eleven ● 2nd eleven ● 3rd eleven ● 4th eleven (Jnr development and social team) T20 : ● Combined Junior and Senior team Veterans : ● Over 40 yr old players Playing membership ~160 combined junior/senior players

Gender Diversity We currently have no junior or senior girl/women teams however this is an area that we would like to grow. Unfortunately, our current clubrooms are not well suited for multi-gender use.

Club Partnerships Yarraleen is the “summer sport” tenant on Bulleen Park Ovals 2 and 3 which we share with the Bulleen and Templestowe Bullants Football Club during the winter months. Yarraleen also has a strong relationship with Marcellin College and their old boys cricket team who we sometimes also share teams with. In addition to local clubs and schools, Yarraleen has strong local relationships with various sponsors including Sensen Networks, OYOB Property Group, Frontier Software, Apparel Corporation, Bakers Delight and High Access Group just to name a few. Yarraleen also has a strong working relationship with Manningham City Council.

Project Precinct Overlap Yarraleen has sent representatives to the various precinct meetings over the last ~2 years and while the details of the various proposals are still very preliminary, they are also varied. The one component of the project that we have been able to identify as a common theme is the tunnel entry point and the likely exclusion zone as represented in the graphic below. From this graphic, it would seem that our club will be at least impacted in the following significant ways Access

● Significant impact on access requiring possible relocation of the Club to another venue due to ground reallocation

This has the potential to alienate our current membership depending on the magnitude of the change (distance) and local

access. It also disconnects our local heritage to this precinct in ways that would require social rebuilding.

● Access road limitations during the construction phase We have a lot of parents who drop their children off for training and if traffic access is compromised, we may lose this and subsequent cohorts of juniors. Considered management of the access road through truck route routing, traffic control devices (lights) and perhaps a remote access road could be considered. This will impact on player and parent access to the precinct. In particular parents will be less tolerant of significant travel delays causing them to consider changing clubs.

● Clarity of access We are concerned that the visiting teams will not easily find

access to the park area during competition (during construction phase) which may lead to delayed/late team arrival (including no-shows/fines) impacting on the game time allocations.

● Noise/dust/disruption to the precinct over an extended period This has the potential to impact the quality of the playing surfaces and general amenity of the precinct. Specifically, dust fallout onto the oval surfaces could result in patchy grass coverage. We are assuming that suitable mitigation devices will be employed both during and after the completion of the project. Consideration of tunnel end zone dust emissions and fallout onto the Bulleen park precinct with time would hopefully also be considered.

Outdoor Amenity

● Oval and pitch redevelopment The number and quality of ovals to bring the precinct up to current AFL and Cricket Victoria standards. There is currently a shortage of playable ovals with pitches in the eastern suburbs and so reducing the precinct number further should be discouraged. AFL sized ovals would provide multi-use facilities for summer cricket and winter football sports. The current ovals would need to be redeveloped to meet these standards including changes to current irrigation and drainage capacity. Each oval should also be equipped with an electronic scoreboard and night flood lighting (LED).

● Training facilities The current training net facilities do not meet the current Cricket Victoria guidelines (i.e. wicket numbers, half pitch slabs, incorrect rubber bounds behind the stumps, location too far from the main pavilion and no power for a bowling machine). A trafficable path for the bowling machine to the nets would also be beneficial.

● Outdoor amenity The areas around the clubhouse could benefit from external public toilets and BBQ facilities to encourage participation and engagement with the community and other sporting clubs.

● Car park allocations An ideal outcome would be to see no net loss of parking spaces either during the construction phase or at the end of the project. In addition, the current access road which is flood prone would be redeveloped with better drainage.

Facilities

● Changes to club rooms/facilities We would welcome a review of our facility which currently consists of a quadrant change room with open shower blocks, a canteen/bar, equipment / scorers room, umpires room and storage lockups. The main issues for this space are - gender isolated change spaces, communal toilets and public toilet access that is difficult to traverse at the rear of the building so we get juniors and girls/women walking through the male changerooms to get to them. We have no separate junior changeroom spaces for junior players in senior teams, no social spaces for the membership (eg meetings), access and pathways to the pavilion are in a poor condition and don’t lend themselves to access by people with a disability or machinery (e.g. bowling machine transport). Ideally, the redevelopment of the site would bring new clubrooms with separate public toilets, a social space, a better change room arrangement to cater for junior/female and senior combinations, re-considered storage solutions for the external lockup areas (currently insufficient and inefficient) and also canteen stock (secure).

● Canteen / Bar facilities The Club already operates a canteen and bar from the clubhouse which serves to offset operational costs from the members (especially junior subsidies). It is a facility that we would not want to lose but rather enhance (e.g. wider to cater for more than 3 staff and to include a secure storage area).

Major Challenges for Yarraleen Cricket Club during the Construction Phase of the Project

While the remediation of the precinct will bring real benefit to the tenants and general public, there are a number of specific concerns that our Committee of Management have identified around the extended construction period. These are as follows:

● Loss of sponsorship if the Club becomes too hard to access and egress or loses too many players through access or allocation issues resulting in financial losses

● Potential ground shortfalls if there are remedial works resulting in a reduced operating capacity (i.e. number of teams that can be registered for the season could be reduced even if there are enough players).

● Junior program losses due to parents believing that the precinct is too difficult to access. This also results in a reduction of volunteer support which is essential for grassroots clubs.

● Senior games delayed or forfeited due to access issues ● Loss of clubhouse for a significant period should there be a re-build ● Junior team attrition leading to club membership contraction and possible

closure Note that with team sport like Cricket, the whole team depends on all players committing to play for the entire season. If anyone drops out of the team (eg reduced parent participation), entire teams (and age groups) could be lost from the Club’s demographic drastically altering membership continuity of senior and junior teams

Possible Arrangements for the Construction Phase of the Project 

                       

Some concepts around the redevelopment of the major ovals for the precinct ..  

● Redevelop the ovals into full sized AFL ovals (3) with the front 2 (1&2) configured for cricket and the rear one (3) for football or soccer

● Leave the existing clubhouse in place and construct a new clubhouse with the changeover to occur between football/cricket seasons to provide operational continuity

● Construct a new service road avoiding the construction site to allow traffic managed access further up Bulleen Rd. In addition to this, consider establishing a construction truck access road down the middle of Bulleen Rd (which is currently a grassed median) to moderate traffic congestion towards the freeway and Templestowe (i.e. N/S egress routes for the trucks) along Bulleen road.

● New training nets to be located between ovals 1 & 2 ● New stadiums to be built between ovals 1 & 2 and another at oval 3

  

Proposed Remedies ● Advertising budget to assist the Club with attracting new junior players

during the construction period (signage, banners and council permits for advertising Boards)

● Cricket Victoria to assist with school outreach programs to attract juniors ● Junior incentives e.g. a budget to facilitate a free cricket kit with every

new junior enrolment to help solidify numbers (e.g. enhanced version of the Woolworths Cricket Blast program kit for older age groups)

● Incentives for sponsors to be associated with the club (e.g. more advertising on playing tops and advertising boards on the heavy traffic routes

● All playing members to receive new branded uniforms for each year during the construction to allow sponsors to maximise their advertising exposure

In summary, the Yarraleen Cricket Club Committee of Management are excited about the prospects of this program and fully endorse the need to progress with the remedy to traffic congestion in the area. As a consequence of this program, we would like to reiterate our concerns over the possible impact to the very existence of our Club; a Club that has already withstood the test of 50 years in operation and is now on the precipice of either renewal or extinction. This fine line balances on the absolute implementation of the construction program. We hope that this clarifies our position and support and we look forward to working closely with the delivery partners to achieve the best outcomes for the Club, community and environment. Yours Sincerely The Yarraleen Cricket Club Inc Committee of Management

Friday, 7 June 2019

Michael Cromie President Yarralean Cricket Club Dear Michael,

RE: North/East Link Proposal Cricket Victoria (CV) endorses the plans and supports Yarralean Cricket Club in all aspects of the effects that the proposed North/East Link will have on the Crciket Club and surrounds at Bulleen Park. The scope, objectives and projected outcomes of the proposal closely align with the Victorian Cricket Strategy (see below)

The Inner East cricket region has identified to increase the access to grounds as a priority infrastructure need for the local cricket community. The region has a growing participation base currently served by insufficient cricket facilities. We believe that the local clubs and community can benefit from the proposal.

If you would like any further information in relation to CV’s endorsement of the project, please contact me at ckennon@cricketvictoria.com.au or via 0473 040 593 Yours sincerely,

Clinton Kennon Area Manager – East Metro