The Docklands Debacle

Ask a local Melbournian to go to the Docklands, and the most likely response you'll get is, "Why?"

The area in the red box is Melbourne's CBD, and the area in blue is the Docklands, so you can see that they're not all that far away. As the crow flies. Getting from one to the other isn't too bad, either. Except the orange area is mostly residential and office buildings. The purple area is all the commercial stuff. It takes about 15 minutes by tram to get from the edge of the CBD to the heart of the commercial area. Given the CBD itself generally has the same stores that you'll find in the Docklands, it raises the question: Why bother?

There are a few things that are Docklands only, and they're pretty much the only reason people go there.

Costco.

And the O'Brien Group Arena (an ice-skating rink).

They did also build a small carnival there, probably to lure in the kids so that the parents would shop at the local stores.

(I know Etihad Stadium is technically in the Docklands, but I still picture the whole Southern Cross station area is part of the CBD in my mind.)

I still remember walking there with Nico, when I first got offered a full time job. We were looking at the apartments in the area, and I was fantasising about how nice it would be to live so close to work. Then I got a pretty big dose of sticker shock when I realised quite a few apartments were close to, if not over a million dollars. I wasn't making that kind of cash!

At the time, there was barely anything in the Docklands. Costco wasn't built yet, and the Melbourne Star was under maintenance again. And yet... all the apartments were being bought up in droves. A lot of them were "off the plan", i.e. they hadn't been built yet, so you were buying sight-unseen (though you didn't get to save on the price of stamp duty!). You would think that this would turn the Docklands into a bustling centre of activity.

Nope. Still a ghost town. Granted, the above photo was taken on a Tuesday at around 11am.

This was on a Sunday afternoon, on the day H&M opened up their store in the Docklands. They offered free parking, free coffee, free flowers, free photos with Santa, and all kinds of free giveaways. Did I mention all of this was free?

As a contrast, here's the long line of people who were lining up to pay to eat doughnuts at Melbourne Central. And I was 30 minutes early that day. The line was at least this plus more behind me by the time I made it to the front of the queue.

What went wrong?

A was telling me today that the Docklands was originally earmarked to be a residential area. Just outside the CBD, the target residents would be well-off corporate workers who wanted the convenience of city-living, without the downsides of actually living in the CBD (noise pollution, no parking, etc). Melbourne is fast outgrowing the supply of houses, and a former swamp was turned into what is now the Docklands. It seems this idea didn't quite pan out, and instead, a series of commercial buildings started being built - Ericsson, NAB, ANZ, Medibank Private, the Bureau of Meteorology, Myer. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of high-rise apartments are also being built.

I don't claim to be any kind of civil planning expert. My only experience with this kind of stuff is the 54 hours of Cities: Skylines under my belt. However, when you have a heap of high density office buildings, as well as high density residential buildings, you are going to end up with a lot of traffic. Not a horrible thing in and of itself, but there are only a few ways in and out of the Docklands, and as you might imagine, traffic can be quite horrible. Someone who lives there told me there is pretty much no point trying to drive home during peak hour. You might as well hop in one of those coin-operated cars for children that you see in shopping centres that just rock side-to-side.

Adding to that, there are no trains that go there - though the nearest station is Southern Cross station, and if you work in an office, it's not a long walk, but it's at least a brisk 20 minute walk to the retail area. You can get there by bus or by tram. As I mentioned earlier, it's about a 15 minute tram ride from the heart of the CBD, so if you're not already in the CBD, you have to add the travel time to get to the CBD. When I was taking skating lessons, I'd have to take a long tram ride into the CBD, then wait for a connecting tram to get to the Docklands. At that time, the trams weren't that frequent on the weekends, so most of the time, I ended up just walking instead, which made my whole trip even longer. At least it's in the free tram zone.

Even though I mentioned that there are a bunch of high-density residential buildings there, I read that the occupancy rate is quite low (around 50%). As most locals know that the Docklands is an overpriced hole, nobody wants to pay the exorbitant rents that the owners are asking for. I'm guessing they were told they'd get a certain level of rental income, and rather than drop their asking price to match what the market is willing to pay, they'd rather leave the places empty. Or rent them out on AirBnB instead, to the dismay of the local residents, who have to put up with loud parties. I've also been told there's a drug problem with squatters in the empty apartments, but haven't read about it anywhere else.

Yet they're still building more apartments!

(And look at that near-empty carpark on a Sunday afternoon.)

I guess they already sucked in buyers back when the Docklands seemed promising. My mum's friend tried to on-sell her yet-to-be-built apartment to us at a discount, and my mum was saying it was a great bargain. Both my siblings and I tried to explain to her how much of a disaster it is, but she couldn't get over the fact that her "friend" was giving us such a big discount (she paid a $70,000 deposit, and was willing to transfer it over to us for $50,000). Whenever I hear offers like that, I ask if something is so good that they want you to buy it, why don't they want it themselves? I would say she realised what a big mistake she made (the apartment still hasn't been built, and this is nearly 2 years since the offer).

The fact that Australian laws are also cutting down on foreign property investment (to some degree) probably also had an impact. Let's just say it's not a co-incidence that a lot of the flyers for properties in the Docklands are printed in both English and Chinese. I guess these are people who can afford for their properties to sit vacant for years. I wonder how many of them have even been to the Docklands. A part of me feels sorry for them, as they were likely given some marketing speech about how the Docklands is going to be this urban hub and they'd get a massive return on their investment. It's not often that real estate loses money for people, right? (I'm not being sarcastic there, real estate is usually considered a fairly safe investment. Except when it's in another country and not built yet, I guess.)

The retail area seems a bit hit or miss. A and I looked at a bunch of empty storefronts, all of which I remember being restaurants once upon a time. He said they've been vacant for over a year and a half. Some of the stores I remember being at Harbourtown aren't there anymore, but it seems that they've done the place up, as there are a lot of other shops there. It's great if you don't like crowded places while shopping! MrFodder and I walked into an EB Games and we were two of three people in the store (not counting the staff).

The last thing I want to mention is the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel.

It was meant to be one of the big attractions, I guess like the London Eye. Except in 40 days of it opening, it broke (in January, 2009). Apparently it wasn't built to withstand the heat. In Australia.  Large cracks were discovered, and they said it wasn't the heat that caused it, but poor design. They decided to build a new wheel. Nearly 3 years later, the wheel was still being reconstructed when strong winds caused the wheel to break free, injuring one of the workers. I love this quote:

In August [2012] it was reported that the wheel could reopen in January 2013, but only if there was "no wind, no rain for the next four months" - an unlikely scenario for Melbourne, "a city renowned for extremely windy springs and rain that washes out the first cricket matches". 

At least they were being realistic.

It finally re-opened again in December 2013. One of the cabins got stuck and was put out of service. It closed again temporarily in January 2014 due to either "windy conditions" or a "software glitch" depending on who you believe.

I'm kinda tempted to ride it just to see what it's like, but I don't want to die. I don't actually know anybody who has been on the wheel, though QCN said she wants to go. I was up for it at the time, but now that I've read about all the disasters, I've been put off. I think it's another one of those tourist-only things in Melbourne. Like going to the Docklands.

As far as I'm concerned, the Docklands is like a worse version of the CBD with better parking. As someone who doesn't drive very often, parking isn't a factor for me.

(As much as it sounds like I hate the Docklands based on this post, I really, really wanted it to succeed. If it wasn't such a pain in the ass to get to and from, I would love to be able to go ice-skating more often. It's the reason I quit taking ice-hockey lessons, because by the time I finished my lesson, it was 9:30, then I had to factor in time change, time to get back to the train station, and then commute home. It was often close to 11pm when I finally got home. On a work night.

I also don't like to see parts of my favourite city look like a ghost town. And I feel bad for all the retailers who opened there, and all the people who worked on it, who probably get mocked by their friends and family.

It is building up over the years though, and who knows, maybe in 5-10 years time, it'll be the bustling urban hub that the original designers had intended. Then I'll wish I had invested in an apartment there.)