Premier events city

Melbourne welcomed the first day of January 2009 with spectacular fireworks and entertainment across the municipality. The City of Melbourne’s family friendly, city-wide event attracted an estimated crowd of 450,000 people and demonstrated why Melbourne is Australia’s premier events city and home to significant national and international events including the Victoria Spring Racing Carnival, the Australian Open, the Skandia Docklands Invitational and Melbourne Comedy Festival.

The City of Melbourne invested $7.4 million in 2008–09 to support an extensive events calendar, which generates activity in the city’s accommodation, dining and retail sectors. The city’s events attract an estimated 5.3 million people to the municipality.
In 2008–09 the City of Melbourne funded 66 organisations through its Event Partnership Program and another 13 significant events received triennial funding. We continued to produce and deliver our own high-quality major events program including a new look Moomba, Melbourne Spring Fashion Week, the Ignite Winter Festival at Docklands and the popular Summer Fun in the City which included events in Melbourne’s parks and gardens, open spaces and waterfronts.

Melbourne welcomed the nation’s Olympians home from Beijing following the 2008 Olympic Games. Around 30,000 people attended the Happy Homecoming parade hosted by the City of Melbourne, the Victorian Government and the Australian Olympic Committee.

In 2008–09 the City of Melbourne established a pilot process for streamlining the receipt of event-related permits under the Building Act 1993 (Vic), with approval of three-year (rather than annual) permits for major events. The Spring Racing Carnival was the first event to receive a new permit and work is continuing to provide other major events with these extended permits.

Ensuring shade on hot summer days

Summer’s hot weather presented a challenge for protecting the City of Melbourne’s heritage trees from heat stress. Many of the city’s trees are old and vulnerable to heat and in January 2009 water supply to trees was increased using additional recycled water. Monitoring of recycled water also increased in the municipality’s wetlands.

Melbourne’s trees are a treasured part of the city’s landscape and in September 2008 and June 2009 community planting days saw 325 community members add 8,300 drought tolerant plants to the city. In addition, the Capital Planting Program placed 1,500 advanced trees in the ground including 85 at Birrarung Marr, 25 at Haymarket Roundabout and 34 at McCracken Street, Kensington.

Longer term management of trees was also addressed in 2008–09 with the development of the draft Tree Strategy for Docklands in conjunction with VicUrban and a five-year tree strategy for the Shrine Reserve.