One of Kilmore’s biggest eyesores could be redeveloped as a retail space should a proposed planning permit be approved.
The vacant site at 58 Sydney Street has been proposed to be turned into multiple retail spaces over two storeys, including a café/restaurant and a dry cleaning business.
The proposed project is being developed by a local developer Joseph Popa from Vanbale and designed by Bruce Mactier at his Kilmore office.
Mr Popa said the current building will be incorporated into the new design.
“You’re not going to see much of it though, it’s going to be pretty much covered. The rest of the site will be shops of different sizes, there’ll be six up top and two on Patrick Street down the bottom,” he said.
“There’ll be some restaurants or cafés, two spaces have a view of the creek at the back with bigger windows. Down the bottom, there’ll be room for businesses to get entry from Patrick Street.”
Mr Popa said including Patrick St frontage as part of the development helps improve another part of Kilmore.
“I had my hair cut on Friday night and the hairdresser started talking about it, she said it’s good someone’s taking care of Patrick St and improving it. It just looks disgusting driving down there,” he said.
Mr Popa said the proposed development would also help the local economy by hiring locals.
“I’ve done projects where we’ve used 100 per cent local trades and we try to keep it at least 80 per cent local trades and supplies.
“We’ll use the local hardware stores and won’t go out of town unless we have to,” he said.
The proposed planning permit is currently up for public consideration at the Kilmore Customer and Library Service Centre and a decision will not be made on the application before Friday, June 28.
It would be awesome to have a local butcher supporting local produce and a fresh fruit and veg shop. Two things I miss
We have a great butcher in the IGA building.
Great opportunity for the council to improve the site, there are to many sites across the communities that make our municipality look very 3rd world like.
I don’t think we have the population (yet) to justify a Kmart, we already have a plethora of cafe’s, chemist warehouse not the worst idea
Chemist Warehouse, the hours the 2 current pharmacies operate.. particularly Simon Yu are a joke. If you need a script or anything medicinal past a certain time you have to trek all the way to bloody Cragieburn to get it!!
Keep Kilmore a country town, keep corporate giants out of town.
Not more take away shops, Kilmore or Broadford need something like a Kmart, Big W but no Target where ever you see a KFC or McDonalds you will see a Target store , we need something different