The wider City of Monash region in Melbourne, housing suburbs Oakleigh and Clayton, is set to transform into an employment and population hub that, if eventuated, will match Melbourne’s Central Business District (CBD) today.
According to The Age, the Monash University precinct and surrounds is already the busiest employment cluster outside of Melbourne’s CBD.
The area, which includes the Monash Medical Centre, Children’s Hospital, Victorian Heart Hospital, the CSIRO, the Australian Synchrotron, and an increasing number of biotechnology companies and start-ups, is attracting highly trained professionals, including many migrants.
Mount Waverley resident, Gregory Liakatos who drives to Oakleigh’s Eaton Mall often for Greek coffee, welcomes the changes to come despite what he has grown accustomed to all these years.
“We’ve got lots of other nationalities coming in adding to the beauty of the place,” he says. “Things can’t stay the same forever. This is life. Melbourne has to grow,” Liakatos said.
Tia Spanos Tsonis, one of the owners of Oakleigh’s famous Vanilla Lounge, a family-owned Greek patisserie and Mediterranean restaurant, stated that Eaton Mall has evolved over the previous 15 years from a largely Greek client base to a mix of cultures and international tourists.
“It’s become a destination,” says Tsonis, the daughter of Greek migrants, whose family have been in hospitality for 50 years.
Clayton’s Grain Emporium owner, Nick Mademlis who opened his bakery 27 years ago, shared similar sentiments for his suburb and says the transformation of Clayton has helped it to thrive.
“Back in the day, Clayton was European city,” he says. “Now it is a younger demographic. It’s dynamic and it is vibrant…” Mademlis said.
The population in the vicinity of the new Monash station will increase from around 14,000 to 30,500 by the middle of the century, while the number of employment will increase from 36,500 to 162,000.
If those forecasts are true, the combined Clayton and Monash University district will have the same number of employment (219,500) as Melbourne’s CBD today.
Source: The Age
