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Flinders Street Station Space Utilisation Study
Client Name
Major Projects Victoria
Date
2007
Project Description
Flinders Street Station is a Melbourne icon. Yet, despite its peerless location in the heart of the Victorian capital, one third of the station building is vacant. Worse, the condition of this space is poor and deteriorating.
In recent years, various uses have been proposed to support the capital investment required to make the whole building usable again. These include accommodating community groups, providing work, exhibition and rehearsal space for arts groups, and hosting a creative industries incubator.
On the advice of the Committee for Melbourne, the Victorian Government decided to investigate further the idea of a creative industries incubator as an interim use while it considered the longer term future of the station precinct.
Our Role
Major Projects Victoria commissioned RPA to undertake the investigation. RPA began by identifying examples of similar incubators in both Australia and overseas, and consulting with potential users of the vacant space from across the creative industries.
RPA found a wide variety of creative incubator models, from traditional business incubators providing intensive support to for-profit start-ups, through to collaborative workspaces where organisations and individuals come together for a limited time to work on common, often community-driven projects. RPA also uncovered a high level of interest in the use of the station building for one or more of these models.
These findings suggested that inviting interested parties to submit expressions of interest detailing how they would use the space would be the best way to encourage proponents to respond creatively to this unique opportunity. Major Projects Victoria also agreed with RPA that proposing a creative industries incubator as the preferred rather than mandated use for the space would be consistent with the station's high public profile.
Project value: $10-15 million
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