The St Kilda Triangle site,next to the Palais Theatre and Luna Park.Credit:James Davies
And the report shows it will be – at a minimum – another three years before anything is built on the site.
Port Phillip Council will on Tuesday night discuss the report,which shows it has spent $8.7 million on the St Kilda Triangle site since 2004.
The figure includes $5 million it paid to a developer to walk away from plans to build a $400 million retail,hotel and tourist destination.
Just over $1 million has also been spent on legal costs for the site. Planning work has been done since 1999 for the wider area that the triangle site sits in on the St Kilda foreshore.
The council has,since 2012,started afresh trying to figure out what to do with the site after the tumultuous battle that raged over the site's redevelopment. But little has come of the plans so far.
It is now writing the business plan for what it will next propose for the site. So unpopular was the last plan for the site that almost all the councillors who had supported it were thrown out at elections in 2008.
Doing nothing to the St Kilda Triangle site has come with an added cost:during the past decade,according to the council report,"St Kilda's role as a key cultural destination for our community,Melburnians and visitors has diminished ... with a notable decline in visitation numbers and overnight stays in the past four years".