In February 2023, Vicinity Centres and Salta Properties, the co-owners of Victoria Gardens Shopping Centre, unveiled plans to transform the centre into a sustainable urban village with a mix of residential, commercial, retail, lifestyle and entertainment destinations.

Victoria Gardens has served as inner -east Melbourne’s premier retail and lifestyle destination for almost 19  years with the proposed plans set to serve the community for the next two decades and beyond.

The vision is to unite Victoria Gardens with Richmond’s evolving urban environment via wide, active street frontages, a new fresh food market hall, civic plazas, and a network of open-air laneways that will truly connect the centre to its surrounds for the first time.

While Victoria Gardens has long been a popular retail hub, key to realising the value of Victoria Gardens in a popular pocket of Melbourne’s inner east, well connected by public transport, will be the proposal’s creation of 1,679 new homes, with a mix of one, two and three-bedroom residences.

With an estimated total construction cost of $900 million, the expansion and redevelopment of Victoria Gardens is projected to create 680 jobs each year during construction and support more than 3,300 ongoing jobs across the precinct upon completion.

The masterplan consists of two new main components, which will transform the popular shopping destination, creating a precinct of open spaces, new homes, office spaces, and an extended retail, lifestyle and entertainment offerings.

• A new mixed-use precinct at the corner of Burnley and Doonside Streets, seamlessly connected with Victoria Gardens to the north.

• Designed by renowned architects Cox and NH.

• 12,070 square metres of new retail and commercial floorspace, with a new fresh food Market Hall.

• Six new residential buildings with shared amenities, providing 839 new homes.

• 3,500 square metres of new publicly accessible open space.

• 844 new bike spaces.

• 518 car spaces.

• Connecting the east of Victoria Gardens to the Yarra River corridor through a series of publicly accessible, open and sunlit spaces and thoroughfares.

• More than 6,200 square metres of publicly accessible open space.

• 840 new dwellings across a cluster of new residential buildings.

• 6,700 square metres of new retail space.

• 26,600 square metres of commercial office space and a new 110 place childcare centre.

• 1,323 car spaces.