A sprawling $15 million fruit and vegetable market and distribution centre to be built in a green wedge near Dandenong, Australia could be stopped, with Planning Minister Richard Wynne saying he may intervene.
The wholesale market is to be built on fields in the suburb of Bangholme, and includes six large sheds and warehouses and a 5000-square-metre food sterilisation plant.
The land is in one of Melbourne's green wedges, created in 1971 to act as Melbourne's "lungs" by creating spaces for farming and open space in perpetuity. But successive governments have allowed developers to chip away at them.
The latest proposal, on land owned by developer Intrapac, was approved by Dandenong Council last month.
Mr Wynne is concerned about the plan – Labor promised in 2014 to protect the green wedges – and is set to step in.
"This proposal clearly does not meet community expectations for developments in the green wedge, and the minister is considering whether he needs to intervene," a spokesman for Mr Wynne said, after Fairfax Media asked his views on the plan.
The proposal sits within a buffer to the nearby eastern sewage treatment plant, created to minimise public exposure to odour. The market would also need 660 car parking spaces and take up 68 per cent of the green wedge site.
The government's Melbourne Market Authority also objected to the plan at Dandenong Council, arguing the proposed Bangholme fruit and vegetable market was best suited to an industrial zone.
