Mitchell Shire Council, Hume City Council and City of Whittlesea will meet on Tuesday to discuss the strategic importance of Cloverton Metropolitan Activity Centre, MAC.
The Cloverton MAC is in the Lockerbie Precinct Structure Plan, PSP, and straddles the boundaries of Hume, Whittlesea and Mitchell councils.
The meeting will be chaired by Hume City councillor Joseph Haweil while Mitchell Shire Council Mayor Fiona Stevens will be deputy chair.
Launched in March 2015, Cloverton is a Stockland property development and is Victoria’s largest master-planned community.
When completed, more than 30,000 residents are expected to live in Cloverton, with a proposed train station, eight schools and the city centre.
Mitchell Cr Rob Eldridge said if planned strategically, the Cloverton MAC would be the new capital of the northern growth corridor, servicing a regional catchment of about 380,000 residents across the three council areas and sustaining an estimated 7500 jobs within the MAC and about 50,000 jobs more broadly.
“It’s a key piece of infrastructure and the combined strategic direction from all three councils will ensure the best outcome for all our communities, and this will probably be an area that a lot of our southern ward people will go to for their employment and most definitely their shopping and the like,” he said.
“It’s a huge opportunity for us to come together and come up with an outstanding outcome.”
Under a Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, between the three councils, officers have been working collaboratively as a regional partnership on the planning for the Cloverton MAC.
Crs Louise Bannister and Rob Eldridge – one councillor from each ward – will participate in the meeting alongside Mayor Fiona Stevens.
Cr Bannister said it is the first time the three councils would have a joint meeting.
“A lot of our communities are on the borderlines of our municipalities, so anytime we can work together to ensure those communities are functioning well and, hopefully in the future, we can work more together so that we can share infrastructure and other things to ensure all our communities are getting the most that they can from their council or councils,” she said.
“I’m pretty excited for it.”
Cr Bill Chisholm said the idea of jointly working together would create better outcomes for everyone.
“It’s extremely important that we try to get the best out of this area of Cloverton,” he said.
“This is really critical and we’ve got other infrastructure in the south that’s going to be very important as well. I think the idea of jointly working together will create better outcomes all round.”
