Contains an error…I think, see if you can spot it. It’s close to the start

Good afternoon everyone,

That was a much more pleasant week of weather – and a productive one for Anzac Station. We’ve opened the right turn from St Kilda Road into Albert Road, along with the parking spaces along the park side.

Next week we’ll reopen the Park Street right turn onto St Kilda Road – the asphalting of the intersection was done last night, now just waiting on confirmation about when the data card for the light sequence arrives and can get plugged into the system at the intersection.
Just a reminder that next Monday is an RDO – So no work on site on Monday.

1. Albert Road legacy construction

As I mentioned in the opener, the Albert Road is now open in both directions and the parking is in place. There is nothing better than freshly laid asphalt.

One last little bit of scope we have to complete is the re-asphalting of the footpath in front of Kettle Black. Next week we’ll see a few pedestrian detours later in the afternoon as we fence across the café, break out the existing asphalt and then roll immediately into the laying the lovely fresh asphalt. It’s not a big surface area, so the asphalting won’t extend overnight – and the loud breaking out of the asphalt should be done in an hour.

While this is happening we’ll put a pedestrian detour in place on the roadway around the footpath.

A quick update on the trees in front of the Hallmark Building – this area is prepped and ready for trees. I’m told that City of Port Phillip has the trees in their possession now – and will be planting them this month before the end of the planting season.

2. Albert Road Reserve Station Entrance

The station walls are progressing well and next week will see more of the precast elements being lowered into the box as well as another wall pour on the southern side.

3. Station Fitout

We’re about 70% done on the installation of the pavers on the station platform and here is also work going on to complete the detailing on the ceiling at the concourse level. We’ve also recently done a lot of work to commission the lifts that will take passengers from the tram stop down the concourse level. Speaking of the tram stop, anyone who hopped on a tram recently will have noticed a bit more real estate on the platform itself, along with the new vinyl showing the artists impression of the future station. We’ll also soon have trees on the tram platform  – It was scheduled in for last night, but Yarra Trams raised some last minute concerns so it had to be delayed. They were also schedule in to plant some trees adjacent to the northern ventilation shafts on St Kilda Road that has to be done at night when trams aren’t running.
Will advise when they pick a new date for tree planting.

4. Shrine Entrance

Nothing too exciting to report from the Shrine entrance since the arrival of the freshly poured staircase. One thing worth noting is that this week we will be closing up the final logistics void in the station roof that we previously used to lower material down. This will kick off the works to relocate a range of services that were temporarily relocated back in 2017, these will be put back onto the station box in their final alignment. The shipping containers adjacent to the Melbourne Grammar school will also start to be removed next week – they have acted as our covered walkways taking the work force back and forward from underground to the site sheds that are located on Domain Road. Similarly, the site sheds will soon be removed from Domain Road in the coming weeks.

5. St Kilda Road – Bowen Lane to Bowen Crescent

Once again, we’ve run into a series of issues in our quest to relocate services in Bowen Lane. Unfortunately this will yet again push back the reopening of Bowen Lane connection to St Kilda Road. I wont offer up a forecast of when it will open until we know a bit more about what is happening with the latest issue-  but we are working hard to get all these services into the ground and the lane reopen.

6. St Kilda Road Bowen Crescent to Toorak Road

Northbound Side (Towards City)

The drainage run is now complete and the team next week will be building the separated bike lanes through this section of the job.

Southbound side (Away from City)

We’ve finally commenced the drainage run along this section of the roadway as we’ve resolved an issue that we mentioned a few weeks back about a gas main being at a higher point than it should be. We’ve got the gas company coming next week to adjust the height, which will give us the opportunity to start get our drainage connection in. We will work from the Royce Hotel back towards St Kilda Road.

Possible Extended Works

We have asphalters booked in this afternoon to complete the asphalting behind the barriers in front of Melbourne Grammar School – I’m told there is an issue with asphalt supply – and as a result this may run a bit later than we would have liked. The good news is that the run is fairly narrow – and inside our site. The extra good news is that once the asphalting through here is complete, we’ll then be able to open the bike lane in this section of road and shift cars into the new asphalted lane. This shift will allow tree planting and turf installation to occur on the inner median in front of the school. It also means the traffic barriers and temporary fencing along the footpath in front of Melbourne Grammar can be removed. Just another welcome example of site fencing disappearing from the area.

Have a great weekend

Thanks, Rob and Remy

A few things to note

• Two lanes open both way on St Kilda Rd – likely early and ready Apil / May 2024
• Edmund Herring Oval back to an oval before end of 2024
• Two week closure of Bowen Cres coming up in October – we get a raised crossing across Bowen Cres at the end of it
• Our footpath re-asphalted by end of September
• Street trees next year – March / May is my guess

An owner of Level 4 is about to put his apartment on the market.

This is the floorplan

Contact Juston directly at campbelljustin176@gmail.com

Good afternoon everyone – Isn’t spring weather wonderful.

After two weeks of having the critical Albert Road works regularly rained on, we won’t dwell on the topic.

Apologies for a very short update this week – The race to get Albert Road reopened has occupied a large portion of our time today.

Onto next week’s work.

1. Albert Road legacy construction

Suffice to say we didn’t get as much done in our two week blitz as we would have liked.

The Friday rain thwarted most of our attempts to complete the final bike lane asphalting and reopen the road entirely. We today prioritised the asphalting of the driveway connections back into buildings and we will have to come back next week to complete the bike lane asphalting (the asphalt batching plant is not open tomorrow so we cant get a supply of asphalt tomorrow to finish the job)

What this means is that the road has now reopened in a temporary fashion to allow residents to enter driveways. It will remain as a one-way arrangement with the exit from Albert Road onto St Kilda road reopened – however the left turn from St Kilda Road into Albert Road has not.  

Next week is a bit up in the air as we have to re-plan the works around an open road – but we will likely have asphalting crews working on Albert Road next week – and we should have enough room to keep local traffic moving during this time and not close driveways.

2. Albert Road Reserve Station Entrance

We managed to get another major pour completed mid-week within the station box entrance and today we lifted in a series of pre-cast concrete elements for the station box.Not too much to report from down in the station box.

3. Station Fitout

Once again, the update is more of the same down on the platform level, with the tiling going  on at the platform level and installing some of the operational elements for the future station.

4. Shrine Entrance

In the Shrine entrance the focus remains the forming and pouring of stair cases. In this area there are two separate sets of stairs, one set for the emergency egress, and the other the public staircase adjacent to the future escalators.

5. St Kilda Road – Bowen Lane to Bowen Crescent

The pedestrian detour through site is in action and as per last weeks update, the drainage run will progresses forward, the new gas line alignment will follow behind it.

6. St Kilda Road Bowen Crescent to Toorak Road

Northbound Side (Towards City)

The drainage run is almost finished, but the same weather that hampered the Albert Road site has slowed progress here. 

Southbound side (Away from City)

As per last week’s update, the final investigation works are continuing in front of the Royce Hotel to give us the full picture of the underground conditions.
All going well we should be able to finally start installing drainage, beginning in front of the Royce and moving towards Toorak Road. This is the opposite direction than we’d normally like to work the connection, but we’ll start up this end to keep things moving along while we lower the gas connection that I mentioned last week.

Upcoming Nightworks Bundle

I mentioned in last weeks update our 3 Night bundle of nightworks  (12-15 September)

I’ve attached the works notice again as a reminder – I thought today I’d give a rough breakdown of which nights these works will take place (This is subject to change – but it is our current plan)

Tuesday Night into Wednesday Morning

• Crews will be using hand tools to remove sections of the hoarding on the tram platform and at the kiosk. We will also need to take the removed panels off the platform using forklifts
• The first of the excavation across St Kilda Road will commence at the pedestrian crossing near the Royce Hotel. The noisiest parts will be at the start of the works with the use of road saws to cut open the road and excavators to remove the asphalt. The conduits are not particularly deep and the team expects to have them installed and backfilled on the one night
• We’ve got four pit lids next to the chiller plants that we need to remove – We need a mobile crane to do this and it needs to be on the tram tracks to get in position.

Wednesday night into Thursday Morning

• On Wednesday night the team will be using the asphalt profiler to remove a layer of asphalt at Park Street and St Kilda Road, and a section up near Dorcas Street.
• The second and third excavated crossings of St Kilda Road will take place on Wednesday night north of the oculus across to Albert Road – Similarly the noisiest parts will be at the start of the works with the use of road saws to cut open the road and excavators to remove the asphalt – and it should be complete in one night

Thursday night into Friday Morning

• Thursday night we’ll be laying the final layers of asphalt at Dorcas Street, and at the St Kilda Road/Park Street intersection. We’ll also go back to each of the crossing points and patch up the areas of the road we excavated with finished asphalt
• We’ll also be standing poles at the various locations across the site.

Have a great weekend

Thanks, Rob and Remy

Click on image for video of last night’s drama

I just chatted to the SE Water guys – they have got our water back on….and they are almost certain that they won’t need to turn it off tomorrow.

Good afternoon everyone – hope everyone enjoyed the first day of Spring,

Below is a snapshot of the works ahead. You’ll notice that today we’ve got a different map to the one you’d be used to seeing in the construction notifications and in this update.

This is due to a few changes to the area in September:

• The works on St Kilda Road between Park Street and Dorcas Street are now complete. There is some minor asphalt rectification works near Dorcas Street coming up, but you’ll see that the concrete barriers are gone and the turf is in along this section.
• Next week we plan to reopen the legacy arrangement for Albert Road, including the left turn from St Kilda Road to Albert Road (more on this below)
• Later in September we’ll reopen the right turn from Park Street onto St Kilda Road (we’ll confirm the timing in future editions, but for now we’ve shown it on the map as upcoming)

And just a reminder that next Monday is an RDO, so no works on site that day.

1. Albert Road legacy construction (Major Works)

It’s been a wet week, which is incredibly frustrating at the best of times, but especially when we’ve closed Albert Road with a jam packed and targeted program to rebuild it entirely. The weather has significantly slowed our progress here and eaten into every ounce of contingency. As we stand right now, the reopening date for the road is Friday 8^th of September (next Friday)

Today and tomorrow we’ll be laying crushed rock and putting in the last of the kerbs and traffic islands, then next week we’ve got the asphalting crews booked in for Wednesday and Thursday, then on Thursday afternoon/evening, we’ll be moving the concrete barriers and fencing, and line-mark the road overnight. On Friday morning the road should re-open. Here’s hoping for some drier weather next week.

In some good news, there is new parking that will come online next week adjacent to Albert Reserve.  I should point out that in the actual legacy design has this parking allocated as a taxi drop off zone for the operational Anzac station. After some quick conversations with City of Port Phillip we’ve agreed that the best course of action is to allocate these parks as short term 1h parking while the construction is still underway and I understand it will remain as such until the opening of the station.

Thanks to everyone for their patience while the works have been underway.

2. Albert Road Reserve Station Entrance

Nothing out of the ordinary at Albert Road Reserve station entrance, the formwork and pouring of walls continues at good pace.

3. Station Fitout

Underground the teams are making their way from south to north on the new station platform laying the flooring down on the platform level. Elsewhere, the focus remains on fitting out the back of house rooms. Last week the team hit a big, but largely invisible milestone when they successfully energised the first of the high voltage substations inside the station, effectively commencing the full energisation process for Anzac Station.

From here the team will start to energise our HV A and B Supply and then move onto our main station switch boards over the coming weeks.

4. Shrine Entrance

Another big milestone this week with the completion of the stairs leading up from the concourse level to the edge of the Shrine of Remembrance and Domain Road.  It may be hard to associate that side of the job with Domain Road as it’s been closed off for so long – but the legacy design reinstates the Domain Road connection to St Kilda Road and these stairs sit just adjacent to the reinstated roadway and tram line. This week we’ve included before and after photos of the completed stairs.

5. St Kilda Road – Bowen Lane to Bowen Crescent

Moving down south along the job and we are continuing to plug away in front of Bowen Lane, this area has been an absolute slog with the amount of services in the area, but we are slowly getting to where we need to be. With the water now installed we’ll be able to move onto the installation of the other services in this section. Once we’re out of the ground and away from the tangled mess below the surface, this section of the job will move along at a much better pace. We’ll move onto the construction of the roadway, kerb and landscaping through this section. 

Drainage installation will be the focus of next week, starting on n the north side of Bowen Lane with a pedestrian diversion in place as we make our way south, as the drainage progresses forward, the new gas line alignment will follow behind it. Based on the current progress, we’ve had to revise the reopening date for Bowen Lane to the 16 September.

6. St Kilda Road Bowen Crescent to Toorak Road

Northbound Side (Towards City)

Works at the southern end of site are a tale of two halves, the citybound side of the job is progressing very well and the drainage installation team are making their way along the road nicely installing the new drainage pipes, by the back end of next week they should be done with their drainage installation and will start building the kerbing and new separated bike lanes. We’ll then do some basic asphalting and by second half of September we should largely be done with our civil works in this spot.

We will come back and do the final layer of asphalting, but we only do that once we’ve got the entire area finished and ready for what is known as the final ‘wearing course’ of asphalt. We’d expect this in late September, early October.

Southbound side (Away from City)

Across the other side of the road the story is not so rosy, we’ve encountered a gas connection that is sitting flush where our drainage pipes are supposed to run through. This section of road has thrown curve balls since we put an excavator in there. When the team opened up the road and started excavating they found a completely unexplained concrete slab sitting just underneath the road, which had to be broken out – just one of the challenges of opening up one of Melbourne’s oldest roads. 

The gas clash means we’ll also need to end our drainage run at a new pit, so today and tomorrow we’ve got crews working close to the corner of Toorak Road excavating and sucker trucks in place to locate the new end-pit.

Next Tuesday we’ll be excavating the remaining section of road between the pedestrian crossing and the little laneway. Same equipment, excavators and sucker trucks.

Later in the week we will also need to close the pedestrian crossing for a short period to complete the investigation work (the crossing point detour will be up at Toorak Road)

This entire exercise is essentially to ensure that there are no other surprises waiting for us underground in these locations, we’ll find out what’s down there, patch it back up and reopen the laneway and pedestrian crossing. We then revise the designs accordingly, and in all likelihood, the gas utility company will adjust the height of their gas connection to make room for our revised drainage design.

We then install our drainage run in and build the kerb and bike lanes and asphalt (as per the city-bound side).

Despite this rigmarole, we’re still targeting being done with our civil works here by the end of the month.

Early Look Ahead : Upcoming Nightworks Bundle

While it’s not next week, we wanted to put in an early look-ahead to some night works that we’ve got coming up.

This is what you could describe as a bundling of works that need to happen overnight with an overnight St Kilda road closure in place. Rather than schedule them separately with multiple weeks of night works – we’ve bundled them together to reduce the overall amount of nights that we are working.

The current schedule is for these works to take place from the 12^th to the 15^th September.

Currently in the bundle is:

• Park St Intersection completion & reopening of the right turn out of Park St
  • Profiling asphalt and laying final section of asphalt
  • Traffic light/lighting installation
  • Connecting in the new traffic lights
• Line-marking to enable the right turn lane out of Park St
• Installation of CitiPower power and irrigation lines under St Kilda road near Albert Road. (Trenching and installation)
• Laying turf in the traffic islands opposite the Hallmark building (While it seems odd to lay turf at night, but its too close to the tram tracks and road to do it safely during the day)
• Scaling back the hoarding that is currently on the tram platform to provide additional space for passengers.

We’re still finalising this scope and we’ll have more information on these works in next weeks notification, along with a map to mark out the locations.

Have a great weekend – and Happy Father’s Day to all the dads,

Thanks, Rob and Remy