If you’ve parked behind Carlisle Street lately, in the sunny asphalt lot, dotted with established native trees, locals making their way to yoga, gym or a local cafe or perhaps just chatting over a take-away coffee — you’ve been standing on land that’s about to change hands, and change use, for the first time in decades.
We are talking about the land bounded by Carlisle, Camden, Alfred and Nelson Streets. Referred to variously as Balaclava’s defacto town square or a disgraceful mess.
Understanding how we got to this point means untangling a messy patchwork of ownership, a fifteen-year-old planning document, and a series of council decisions that stretch back to 2019. Here’s the factual timeline.
A patchwork block, not a single site
It’s easy to assume the car park is one parcel of land. It isn’t. The block is a checkerboard of public and private titles that built up piecemeal over decades:
Publicly owned, by the City of Port Phillip:
- 2–8 Alfred Street — a Council-owned and managed public car park
- 49–53 Nelson Street — a Council-owned and managed public car park
- Four laneways threading through the block (known on Council’s road register as R3743, R3979, R3977 and R4141)
Privately owned, by Coles:
- 54 Camden Street (the existing supermarket) and the car park immediately behind it
- 10–18 Alfred Street (car park)
- 55–57 Nelson Street (car park)
- Various shop titles fronting Carlisle Street
Interestingly, even much of the “public” land isn’t tidily titled to the council. Two of the four laneways are still recorded on title under the name of the original 19th-century subdivider rather than “City of Port Phillip” — a quirk of how rights-of-way were historically dedicated, not a sign of different ownership in practice. Only one laneway parcel (R3979, a 269m² strip behind the supermarket) is titled directly to the council as freehold land.
Altogether, Coles already owned roughly 8,130m² in the block before any of the land now being discussed changed hands. The parcels Council is selling add up to about 2,240m².
Where the site sat for decades
Coles has operated a supermarket at the Camden/Alfred Street corner for around fifty years. Over that time, an informal but functional car park grew up behind and around it — some sections owned and run by Council for general public parking, others owned by whoever held the supermarket freehold. The whole area became a de facto, continuous car park serving the Carlisle Street shopping strip, even though it sat across multiple titles and two different owners.
The Council’s 2009 Carlisle Street Retail Renewal Precinct Structure Plan flagged these sites as having development potential beyond car parking, but nothing moved for another decade.
2019: Council decides to sell
On 20 November 2019, Council resolved to begin negotiating the sale of its Balaclava landholdings, with the stated aim of “fostering staged renewal” of the Carlisle Street precinct.
2021–2022: The Woolworths car park goes first
The first parcel to actually change hands wasn’t the Coles. In early 2022, Council sold the car park at 39–47 Camden Street to a Woolworths-linked company (Fabcot) for $6.6 million, with terms allowing Woolworths up to nine years to commence development. As of 2026, nothing visible has happened on that site.
2023: Coles buys out its neighbour
For years, the supermarket building and surrounding car parks at 54 Camden Street had been owned by local businessmen via a company called Blue Chip Property Holdings (who’d held it since 2000), with Coles simply as the anchor tenant. Council held early talks with Blue Chip and its manager, GLG Properties, about buying the council land, but terms were never agreed.
That changed in March 2023, when Blue Chip sold its entire interest — supermarket, car parks and surrounding retail — to Coles Group Property Developments Ltd for a reported $80 million. Coles was now, for the first time, both the anchor tenant and the dominant landowner in the block, and it appointed architects (Rothe Lowman) and planning consultants to begin master-planning a much larger mixed-use redevelopment.
August 2024: Council moves to sell what’s left
With Coles now surrounding almost all of the remaining council land, officers recommended selling the last public parcels and laneways to Coles by private treaty (direct negotiation) rather than through a public tender or auction — the justification being that Coles’ existing landholdings made it the only buyer able to realise the land’s full “synergistic value.”
On 21 August 2024, Council voted unanimously to commence the formal statutory process required to:
- Sell the land at 2–8 Alfred Street and 49–53 Nelson Street, and
- Discontinue (permanently close) and sell the four laneways
to Coles Group Property Developments Ltd.
2025: Consultation, valuation, and the final vote
Through late 2024 and into 2025, Council ran statutory public notice periods, an online survey, and community consultation on the proposed sale. An independent valuer was engaged to assess “equitable value” — a method that explicitly factors in the added value the land has for Coles specifically (given its surrounding holdings), rather than open-market value alone.
Because Coles already held a substantial share of the local retail land, the transaction was large enough to require notification to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) as a business acquisition.
On 24 September 2025, Council voted unanimously to proceed with the sale — moved by Cr Libby Buckingham and seconded by Cr Justin Halliday. That pairing is worth pausing on. A year earlier, at the very first Carlisle Street community forum, Halliday had been among those arguing Council shouldn’t sell the land at all, calling the process “not the best process.” Seconding the motion to proceed marked a public change of position, which he attributed to the community consultation undertaken since, and the concessions won from Coles via the non-binding MoU — while stressing those concessions had addressed “many, but not all” of his original concerns.
The September 2025 vote authorised proceeding with the sale and set out the following as the minimum conditions to be secured through the Section 173 Agreement (a legally binding land-use agreement registered on the property title):
- A contemporary, full-line supermarket
- Replacement of the existing 142 public at-grade parking spaces with basement parking, on equivalent terms
- Retained vehicle access to the rear of Carlisle Street shops
- New public toilets (male, female and accessible)
- At least 250m² of new public open space
(NOTE: No mention of a Town Square space – one of the key wishes that came from the “Community Consultation”) - Multiple, clearly defined pedestrian entrances into the site
- Retention and conservation of existing heritage buildings
- A residential component that must include an affordable housing contribution
Everything beyond these baseline conditions — building height, architectural quality, the specific mix of retail and housing — is not locked in by the sale. Instead, it’s covered by a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding, under which Coles has agreed to share its plans with Council and the community before lodging a formal development application.
Council also resolved that sale proceeds will go into its Strategic Property Reserve, earmarked (subject to future budget processes) to help fund the St Kilda Library refurbishment, elements of the Balaclava Urban Forest Precinct Plan, and streetscape upgrades under the Carlisle Street and Surrounds Streetscape Plan.
Where things actually stand: the September 2025 resolution didn’t just set minimum conditions — it also directly authorised the Chief Executive Officer (or their delegate) to execute the Contract of Sale, the Section 173 Agreement and the Memorandum of Understanding, including affixing Council’s common seal where required. That means no further council vote is needed to complete the sale. The eight baseline community-benefit conditions above are locked into the resolution itself — the CEO’s role is to execute an agreement that secures them, not to trade them away. The one area the resolution explicitly leaves to the CEO’s discretion is narrower: finalising the implementation detail of rear-of-shop access and an associated carriageway easement, “to their satisfaction.” Everything genuinely still open for negotiation — building height, architecture, the exact retail/residential mix — sits in the non-binding MoU, which was never subject to a council vote in the first place.
What we are requesting is that Council vote to revoke the authority delegated to the CEO so that new s173 conditions can be negotiated before the imminent sale is finalised.
Worth noting that at the recent Council meeting on August 19, council officers suggested that any amendments strengthening the conditions to reflect further community asks would affect the sale price
2026: The land sale is largely resolved. The design fight isn’t.
As it currently stands the sale is all but settled — conditions locked in, execution authority granted — Council’s remaining leverage over what actually gets built is limited. Coles’ development application is expected to be lodged through the Victorian Government’s Development Facilitation Program (DFP) — a state pathway under which the Minister for Planning, not Council, makes the final approval decision. Council’s role from this point is as an advocate and stakeholder, not the decision-maker.
Our view is that unless Council votes to revoke the delegated authority for the CEO to finalise the sale and allow for further meaningful community consultation, all authority will move to the DFP and neither council nor the community will have any futher say over the outcome
In parallel, Council is running a new Carlisle Street Activity Centre Structure Plan, replacing the outdated 2009 version. Community feedback closed in May 2026, with a second, deeper round of workshops scheduled for October 2026 and Council due to adopt a formal advocacy position on the Coles and Woolworths sites in late 2026 — feeding into the state’s decision-making, but not overriding it.
The bottom line
Council has voted unanimously to sell its remaining public land in the block, locked a somewhat vaguely worded set of minimum community-benefit obligations into that resolution, and authorised the CEO to execute the sale — meaning no further council vote stands between here and settlement. What’s still genuinely open is everything the resolution didn’t cover: height, density, design quality, and the specific retail/residential mix, all sitting in a non-binding agreement rather than a binding one. That’s where community pressure can still shape the outcome — but the forum for it has shifted. From here, it plays out through the Structure Plan process and, ultimately, the state’s Development Facilitation Program — where the final word rests not with our councillors, but with the Minister for Planning
Sources: City of Port Phillip council reports and minutes, including the full Minutes of the Meeting of the Port Phillip City Council, 24 September 2025 (Item 11.1, Carlisle Street Proposed Sale of Land); Minutes of 19 March 2025; City of Port Phillip Have Your Say Carlisle Street Activity Centre and Carlisle Street Carparks and Laneways project pages; Better Balaclava FAQ; TWiSK (This Week in St Kilda) reporting, 27 September 2025; ACCC public acquisitions register. The research and preparation of this post was assisted by Claude AI