COMMUNITY ASSETS & INFRASTRUCTURE INITIATIVE – OVER $5 MILLION

CASEY CITY COUNCIL PLANNING, DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND MANAGEMENT TEAMS

Cranbourne West Community Hub

The Cranbourne West Community Hub provides multipurpose intergenerational community spaces that deliver opportunities for people to meet, learn, play, socialise, connect, and express their culture. The Hub is a space that goes on to support local small businesses to thrive through the provision of affordable training, meetings, communal space, and consulting rooms – all in an environmentally sustainable package.

In practice, the Cranbourne West Community Hub is a $9.7 million state-of-the-art facility featuring flexible and shared multi-use spaces. The unique building, opened in 2021, is designed with environmentally friendly elements that seek to delight the eye, from its recycled bricks to its green terrace sustained by recycled water. It has a low carbon footprint powered by stored solar systems and a retractable roof that naturally cools the building.

The Hub offers local residents a variety of accessible and low-cost integrated services that enhance the council’s ability to build and maintain connections with key agencies and community service organisations, including improved referral pathways with more than 15 partnerships functioning out of the Hub. Positively received by the community, the Hub has since received more than 5,000 visits and provides 70 programs including indoor sport and physical activity, parenting programs, family gatherings, and private functions.

Wodonga City Council

Hyphen, Wodonga Library Gallery

‘Hyphen’ saw an obsolete library and gallery redeveloped into a state-ofthe-art community cultural hub located in Wodonga’s CBD. The venue is dedicated to the presentation of experiences that nurture creativity, connection, and curiosity in an accessible, inspiring environment. It is a place where the community and visitors can connect with ideas, skills, knowledge, and each other.

The unique building gets its name from the connection between the building’s twin purposes of art and literature. It also reflects the building’s signature cantilever feature (being dash-like in shape) which holds a gallery above the venue’s entrance. The overarching architectural aspiration for the venue was to create a combined library and gallery facility that would offer elevating and interesting spatial experiences.

The engineering achievement of its first-floor gallery suspended approximately 10 metres above the entrance and projecting into the precinct’s courtyard was the work of a partnership between Sydney-based and local architects. A single piece of curvaceous black steel forming a spiral staircase drawing visitors into the space and then upwards from the foyer is another such visual marvel.

The development of Hyphen and Wodonga’s community cultural precinct that it lives within is a key strategic imperative in strengthening Wodonga’s economic, cultural, and social capacity, both now and into the future.

Initiatives that demonstrate a commitment to working with and/or in the community to achieve positive outcomes.

• Clarity of outcomes and impact on the sector

• Demonstrated leadership

• Effectiveness of collaboration

• Transferability of the initiative

• Complexity of project

• Whittlesea City Council Partnerships and Stakeholder Engagement Team Epping Community Services Hub

• Greater Geelong City Council Youth on Board

• Hume City Council

Hume Winter Lights Festival

• South Gippsland Shire Council

Local Men Local Communities