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About Kooky and Shaka →A master plan for the Preston Market site in Melbourne's north has been lodged with Victoria's Planning Minister, Sonya Kilkenny, and is open for public comment, ABC News reported on Friday 2 October. The plan would keep 81 per cent of the market's existing footprint and build about 900 apartments around it, in eight towers of eight to 16 storeys.
Feedback goes to the Victorian government, not to the local council, and closes on Wednesday 14 October, the ABC reports.
The plan answers planning controls that the state wrote for this one site in 2023, at the end of a review that began in 2017 and turned on how much of the market could be knocked down. It also arrives ahead of a state election, which the ABC notes is set for 28 November.
Figures from the master plan as reported by ABC News on 2 October 2026.
What the master plan proposes
The ABC's account of the document gives its main numbers. About 900 apartments would be spread over eight towers placed around the market, the lowest of them eight storeys and the tallest 16. About 10 per cent of the dwellings would be affordable housing, which on a total of about 900 means about 90 homes.
The plan adds a new park of 2,700 square metres and about 14,000 square metres of additional floor space described as specialty retail and commercial. It includes added car parking to support the fresh food market. Construction would proceed stage by stage, so the site is not rebuilt in one go.
The developer is Preston Market Development Pty Ltd. The land is privately owned by Medich Corporation, which the ABC describes as a Sydney-based property investment firm. That ownership is the starting point for everything else in the story. The ABC contrasts Preston with Queen Victoria Market and South Melbourne Market, which are owned by councils. Preston Market opened in 1970 and, as its developer puts it, was established as a privately owned venture.
Related readSingapore's Government Land Sales programme: how the two lists workThe ABC calls it Melbourne's second-largest market, and reports that its redevelopment has been controversial for several years, with Darebin City Council having fought earlier proposals that would have demolished much of the old market. That history explains the attention a planning document for one site in Preston receives.
A private market the state has already fenced in
The site does not sit under ordinary council planning rules. The Victorian Planning Authority, the state body that prepared the controls, records on its project page that the Minister for Planning asked it in 2017 to review the rules across the site. Darebin City Council, whose area covers Preston, dates that decision to August 2017.
What followed was long. The council's project page lists four phases of consultation in 2018 and 2019, three run with the planning authority and one led by the council itself. In September 2019 the council published its own vision, called The Heart of Preston, built on three aims: keep the market on its current site and in its current form, keep it a place for affordable, fresh and diverse food, and protect existing traders through any redevelopment and afterwards.
The same month brought a decision that shaped the rest of the process. On 18 September 2019, according to the council's timeline, the Heritage Council found that the market was not of state significance. Protection at state level was therefore not available, and the argument moved to what local planning controls could require.
In August 2020 the state government announced that planning for the precinct would be fast-tracked, the council's timeline shows. The planning authority put a draft planning scheme amendment out for comment in May 2021. Its own page says the draft covered affordable housing, open space, market continuity, a development contributions plan and a heritage overlay. The council records that the consultation ran from 18 May to 13 July 2021 and drew 386 submissions.
Related readSingapore: Lucerne Grand 61% sold as The Serra Residences previews- 2017The Minister for Planning asks the Victorian Planning Authority to review the site's planning controls.
- May 2021A draft amendment goes out for comment and draws 386 submissions.
- Late 2022A standing advisory committee holds a five-week hearing on a revised draft.
- 7 August 2023Amendment C182dare is approved and gazetted, with a heritage overlay.
- October 2026The owner's master plan is lodged. Feedback closes on 14 October.
How the 2021 draft became the 2023 rules
Darebin City Council opposed the 2021 draft. Its project page says councillors resolved on 28 June 2021 to make a critical submission, lodged on 13 July that year, and that it was concerned that 80 per cent of the market could be demolished. The page lists its other objections: weak heritage protection, no protection for the market's social and cultural role, no guarantee for existing traders and excessive density.
The draft did not survive in that form. In September 2021, the Victorian Planning Authority records, the minister asked it to revise the draft, including by reducing overall building heights and the number of dwellings. The council describes the revised plans, released in March and April 2022, as having reduced density and reduced, mandatory building heights, with changes to affordable housing and to contributions.
The revised draft then went to a standing advisory committee, an independent panel that hears evidence and advises the minister. The council says the hearing ran for five weeks, from 3 October to 10 November 2022. The council took its own alternative plan to that hearing. As its page describes it, the alternative kept and upgraded the market with the same traders and spaces, provided the same number of apartments as the planning authority's plan, improved walking and cycling links, added open space and affordable housing, and kept the market serviced through each stage of redevelopment.
The committee's report was released in early 2023; the planning authority's page gives March and the council's page gives April. The council's summary of its finding is that removing a substantial part of the market's fabric, as the planning authority had proposed, did not strike the right balance, and that the market should stay substantially where it is. The council adds that the report came with a commitment from the Premier to protect the market with a Heritage Overlay.
Related readUS residential construction spending rose 1.1% in August 2026On Monday 7 August 2023 the minister approved Amendment C182dare to the Darebin Planning Scheme, and it was gazetted the same day, the planning authority's page shows. The council lists the precinct's controls as an Activity Centre Zone, a Development Plan Overlay and a Heritage Overlay. In the council's words, the rules require substantial retention of the existing market where it stands, and allow for 1,200 new homes plus retail and commercial development. The planning authority's page also links a statement of significance and heritage design guidelines gazetted with the amendment.
What the plan must be measured against
Those 2023 rules are the yardstick for the document now on exhibition. Two of its headline numbers can be set against what came before.
The first is the market itself. In 2021 the council feared a scheme under which 80 per cent of the market could go. The plan reported by the ABC keeps 81 per cent of the existing footprint. The developer's position, as the ABC reports it, is that the plan keeps the market in its current location while renewing ageing infrastructure and protecting its heritage significance.
The second is the number of homes. The controls allow for 1,200. The plan proposes about 900, which is 300 fewer than the figure the council cites, in buildings that top out at 16 storeys.
Neither comparison settles whether the plan meets the controls. That is a judgment for the minister, on detail the summary figures do not show: where the towers stand in relation to the market sheds, how the heritage design guidelines are applied, how the market trades during each stage of construction. Asked about the plan, a Victorian government spokesperson told the ABC it would be inappropriate to comment on its contents while it is being considered, and encouraged the community to give feedback.
Related readUS new-build homes: builder warranties and the federal rulesThe 2023 rules decided that the market stays. The 2026 plan is where the owner shows how much of it, and what gets built around it.
What each side is saying
The developer has kept to the planning case. A spokesperson for Preston Market Development declined to comment on political matters, the ABC reports, and pointed out that the market was established as a privately owned venture and has been run as a fresh food market for more than 50 years.
Darebin City Council will prepare a submission to the minister and is encouraging residents to make their own, according to the ABC. Mayor Emily Dimitriadis told the broadcaster the council's focus is on providing space and accommodation for a growing community while protecting the market's unique character. The council's own page is plain about the limits of its role: it does not own the market and has no formal power over the planning controls for future development.
The Victorian Greens want more than changes to the plan. They have called on the state and federal governments to acquire the market, the ABC reports, and they have criticised the community consultation as far too limited. Greens MP Anasina Gray-Barberio described the market to the ABC as one of the most important multicultural community spaces in Melbourne's north, and said plans should put the community and traders first.
The government's line, through its spokesperson, is that Labor would protect the market's heritage as homes are delivered near Preston Station.
The ABC's report does not quote any stallholder. For traders, the passages of the plan that matter most are the ones on staging: the council's 2019 vision asked that existing traders be protected during and after redevelopment, and its 2022 alternative plan asked that the market stay serviced while building goes on. The ABC's summary of the lodged plan says construction would be staged; it does not say how trading continues during each stage.
Related readVictoria fast-tracks 15,000 homes while completions rise by sevenThe Planning Minister, not the council, rules on this plan
Under the 2023 controls the Minister for Planning is responsible for the development plan and for all future permits in the precinct, Darebin City Council's project page states. Feedback goes to the Victorian government and closes on 14 October 2026, ABC News reports.
The apartment market the towers would join
A development plan sets out the shape of a precinct. It is not a sales launch, and nothing in the ABC's report gives a construction start or a date for the first apartments. Planning permits, which the minister also decides here, come after it.
Two recent figures describe the unit market the homes would eventually join. The Real Estate Institute of Victoria, in a commentary published on 29 September, put Melbourne's median unit sale price at A$645,000 in August, up 2.9 per cent over the month and 0.2 per cent lower than a year earlier. Figures from the data firm Cotality, reported by the ABC on 16 September, showed that 20.8 per cent of Melbourne unit resales in the June quarter were made at a loss.
Those two figures describe the established market across the whole city, not new apartments in Preston, and they say nothing about what a home beside the market and the railway station would fetch. They are the backdrop against which any project of about 900 apartments would be read.
For agents working in Melbourne's north, the plan is worth following for a simpler reason. It is a large site near Preston Station, under controls that allow for 1,200 homes, with the minister deciding both the development plan and the permits that follow.
What happens next
Two dates are fixed. Feedback closes on 14 October, and the council's submission to the minister is being prepared for that consultation. The state election follows on 28 November.
No date has been announced for the minister's decision, and the government has said it will not discuss the content of the plan while it is under consideration. The site's recent history suggests patience: the review that produced the current controls started in 2017 and ended with a gazettal in August 2023, and the 2021 draft was sent back for lower heights and fewer homes before anything was approved.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
