Croydon Community Wellbeing Precinct

Located in the former Council service centre and offices, ‘Hub B’ has gone through redevelopment to provide upgraded facilities for community groups. The building now houses various local community groups including U3A, Croydon Central Kindergarten, Maroondah Occasional Care, Croydon Senior Citizens, Maroondah Community Assist and Croydon Maternal and Child Health Service.

This multipurpose hub is proposed to replace the current Keystone Hall next to the Athletics track and will back on to two new bowling greens. It will be home to Croydon Bowls Club, the Croydon RSL and the current sporting groups in the Precinct and will provide a much-needed upgrade to facilities for these groups.

Consultation with the community and key stakeholders has helped to create a shared vision for the precinct:

• The Croydon Community Wellbeing Precinct reflects and facilitates the community we aspire to be, where people know and support each other, and feel a strong sense of belonging. 
• The Precinct brings together a range of community services, programs and activities for people of all ages and abilities, within a parkland setting. 
• The village feel and local character of Croydon is preserved through excellence in urban design, and with improved pedestrian connectivity with links to Croydon Main Street and Croydon rail and bus interchange. 
• The accessible and integrated community hubs create opportunities for social connection; improved health and wellbeing; and exciting opportunities to bring together new learning experiences that raise the wellbeing of our community. 
• Importantly the precinct provides links to our cultural heritage and history, while also providing flexibility to meet the current and future needs of the community. 

The current Croydon Civic precinct contains a significant number of separate community facilities that are occupied by a number of community groups and sporting clubs. These facilities have reached the end of their useful life, are no longer fit for purpose, and don’t meet the future needs of the community groups, sporting clubs, and the broader community. Council has undertaken a masterplan for the redevelopment of the Croydon Civic precinct to facilitate the creation of a new Croydon Community Wellbeing Precinct that will include elements such as, community hubs, enhanced open space, enhanced accessibility and connectivity, and potential development sites.

A community hub is a conveniently located public facility that is recognised and valued in the local community as a gathering place for people and an access point for a wide range of community activities, programs, services and events. The proposed community hubs in the Croydon Community Wellbeing Precinct will be focused on enhanced community wellbeing for all ages and abilities.

The current pond at Croydon Library is in poor condition and as such, the proposal is to retain an enhanced, smaller, water body, that complements the facilities and open space areas in the precinct. This will form part of the future staging, and will include further community consultation and design.

The façade associated with EV’s Youth Centre, formally Croydon Hall, has local heritage significance, and is intended to be retained and incorporated into the design and construction of the new community hub A. The artist impressions above best represent the intensions for this Heritage aspect.

This Heritage Victoria listed building will be retained on-site and enhanced as part of the project. A separate Heritage Victoria Planning Process will be undertaken for this portion of the site as a further stage of the project.

Listed community groups have already been or will be relocated within the precinct during various stages of construction. We are working closely with all groups currently operating on the site to make sure their needs are met.

Information will be available during the Planning Process.

The Masterplan sets out an objective to connect a pedestrian spine through the precinct. This is still the case and will continue to develop through further project stages.

Hub A will be a 5 Star Greenstar accredited and certified building and will include measures such as Solar Power, Rainwater Harvesting and Low-carbon Materials.

The Masterplan sets out the expectation for enhanced open space throughout the precinct. This is still the objective. The development of Hub A sees the start of that objective being realised. Over future stages of the project further open space planning and design will occur and the community will be involved in this development.

Council has received funding from the Australian Government to provide a community performance and events space for local creatives. 

This space will service the missing link in smaller scale performance and presentation spaces in Maroondah.  

Features include: 

• Small to medium scale theatre space to seat approximately 160 patrons. 
• Versatile space with retractable seating based on a black box model 
• Accessible and inclusive space design to meet the needs of our diverse community 
• Mixed use space to meet the needs of smaller scale productions and user groups 
• Regular and casual hire groups  

The Masterplan informed the land usage around the precinct. Since that time, further detailed work has informed the design to date.

This will be included in the Planning Process, likely to be in November this year.

This is expected November this year.