Heide Museum asks state for expansion to offset North East Link disappointment

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Heide Museum asks state for expansion to offset North East Link disappointment

By Clay Lucas

The directors of Heide Museum of Modern Art in Bulleen will ask the Andrews government to consider building it an additional $70 million gallery to offset the disruption it is due to face when the North East Link cuts underneath its grounds.

One option floated suggests using a portion of a neighbouring golf course, Yarra Valley Country Club, owned by pokies billionaire Bruce Mathieson. However, Mathieson has his own intentions for the land – he is closing the club on June 30 after five decades of operation and wants the state’s planning minister to rezone the 22-hectare course for development, to build 200 homes.

Heide directors want to build a new wing to house more of its permanent collection and to better accommodate exhibitions, and also to offset the downsides of seven years of construction of the $16 billion North East Link road, which tunnels under Bulleen.

An artist’s impression of one option for a new Heide gallery, taken from its government-funded master plan.

An artist’s impression of one option for a new Heide gallery, taken from its government-funded master plan.Credit:Heide Masterplan by Carmody Groarke

In 2020 Manningham Council valued the golf course and country club buildings neighbouring Heide at $10.85 million; if rezoned for housing the property would be worth far more.

Heide has floated using part of the land for a gallery building that would overlook its existing sculpture park. If that is not possible, the gallery has proposed a new building on the site of its current lower car park.

The use of the gallery’s car park as the site for a new gallery is part of Heide’s master plan, completed with funding from state government arts agency Creative Victoria.

Heide’s expansion plan retains the heritage-listed 1960s modernist building that was once the home of arts patrons John and Sunday Reed, who bought the Bulleen property in 1934, along with a farmhouse building near the property’s Templestowe Road entrance.

While the master plan did not envisage using the Mathieson land, supporters of the gallery – including local Manningham councillor Stephen Mayne – say the golf course would make a perfect site, and a far better use of the land than housing.

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“Heide will be boxed in by the North East Link. It would make a lot of sense for the state government to work with billionaire Bruce Mathieson to help facilitate an expansion of Heide onto the neighbouring land currently occupied by his Yarra Valley Country Club site,” Mayne said.

Heide is on Templestowe Road where, nearby, the state government is turning land it owns into new soccer pitches to offset sports grounds lost elsewhere for the North East Link.

The North East Link’s tunnel under Bulleen passes beneath Heide’s northern boundary.

An early image of Bruce Mathieson’s housing where the Yarra Valley Country Club now sits. Heide is at the bottom of the image.

An early image of Bruce Mathieson’s housing where the Yarra Valley Country Club now sits. Heide is at the bottom of the image.Credit:Grimshaw Architects

Under the tunnel’s 2019 plans, exits were to be built for Bulleen in both directions on the toll road. Under the design contracted by the government in 2021 though, an exit will only be built for those coming to Bulleen from Melbourne’s city centre. Those travelling from the airport or Greensborough towards Bulleen will not be able to exit.

The gallery had asked the government for a high-profile new entry as part of the roadworks; a new entrance was not included in the new design.

Heide co-directors Lesley Harding and Tim Sligo want the state government to use the seven years of toll road construction as a “re-set” for the Bulleen precinct. Harding, Heide’s artistic director, said it had worked with the government on its master plan to enable the museum to better showcase its significant cultural history, “from [the] First Peoples to the era of Australian modernism”.

Heide co-directors Tim Sligo and Lesley Harding in the gallery’s courtyard last week.

Heide co-directors Tim Sligo and Lesley Harding in the gallery’s courtyard last week.Credit:Eddie Jim

She said the improved access the North East Link and other transport infrastructure would bring needed to also improve cultural, tourism and employment in the area.

Sligo, Heide’s executive director, said the gallery was very concerned people would have difficulty driving to the gallery for many years because of both the North East Link works and redevelopment of the Mathieson land.

Templestowe Road is also being duplicated because of its high car volumes. All three will exacerbate traffic issues for Heide, which gets about 100,000 visitors annually.

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“Our key concerns are that the North East Link and the wider cultural precinct facilitate improved access to an expanded Heide, and that there is seamless connectivity throughout the precinct,” he said.

Manningham Council opposes Mathieson’s housing plan on the Yarra Valley Country Club next to Heide. Mayor Michelle Kleinert said the proposal had “critical flaws”, and the planning minister should reject it. Mathieson is working with lobbyists Darrin Ray and Charles Pick, both former local government councillors and Labor Party members. Planning Minister Richard Wynne’s spokesman said the minister had not met with the lobbyists, nor Mathieson, about the proposal.

Another Manningham councillor and former mayor, Andrew Conlon, who plays at Yarra Valley Country Club, said it was “extremely disappointing that after 50 years as a functional golf course the landowner will be closing ... prior to any decision by the planning minister regarding the rezoning”.

North East Link chief executive Duncan Elliott said the toll road’s design significantly reduced construction impacts on Heide and provided better access than exists now.

A dramatically widened Eastern Freeway - shown here with more than 20 lanes - is part of the North East Link project.

A dramatically widened Eastern Freeway - shown here with more than 20 lanes - is part of the North East Link project.Credit:Victorian government

Creative Industries Minister Danny Pearson’s spokesman said the Andrews government supported arts institutions like Heide, “year in and year out and are always happy to hear about plans for the future”.

He said the North East Link had “been designed to protect Heide, improve access and create better public open space for visitors to the area to enjoy.”

A spokesman for Mathieson’s group said the Heide proposal for a gallery was “very strange, and (it was) hard to take seriously random new ideas about how other parties wish to use our land”.

They said their proposal already had a “list of major public benefits … chief among them is gifting back to the public a 16ha new open space park along the Yarra River in Bulleen” as part of the housing project.

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