Photo by Emma Cross
Sunvale Community Park is classified as a Flagship Park in Council’s Creating Better Parks Policy and Plan and therefore receives the highest levels of maintenance. Operational staff from Parks Services and Building Maintenance attend the site weekly to ensure that it is clean, safe and well maintained.
Council’s Creating Better Parks Policy and Plan recommended that the disused school be purchased for open space. When the State government announced, they were going to sell the vacant land, Council and the community advocated together with Council succeeded in buying two thirds of the disused site.
From this Council created a visionary master plan that incorporated all community ideas and were able to use this masterplan to advocate for funding from the State government. This was successful and resulted in around $3.6M funding from the State to implement the whole masterplan.
The design of Sunvale sought to ensure that the park caters for multiple and diverse users and the expected increase in housing density for the Sunshine Priority Precinct. As a Flagship Park and Oasis Park, Sunvale has functions that cater for:
Sunvale has been restructured to ensure that the connection to the local community that started with the primary school now continues as a key public realm destination for the local community to meet, be active and to assist in the liveability of Sunshine.
Brimbank City Councils Urban Design Department lead the development of the masterplan (co-funded by the State of Victoria), design and construction for this park. This project required the involvement of many other professionals to ensure quality outcomes were achieved. Within Council the following professionals were involved:
The following external professionals were engaged:
Sunvale Community Park has been recognised as a great exemplar of a contemporary park winning two state and one national industry awards for Park of The Year in 2020 from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects and from Parks and Leisure Australia.
Sunvale Community Park was chosen as a site to conduct an interview with Adrian Gray, Chair of Greening The West and Manager of Urban Design at Brimbank City Council to discuss the role that nature play has for children. Sunvale has natural play elements that include plants, logs, water, rocks, sand and musical objects.
The Sunshine Library conducts reading events in the park with the local community and during National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) week, events and discussions have taken place at Sunvale linked to the indigenous sculptural pieces designed by local First Nations People title, The Five Elements.