Community Vision

There’s no denying it: Melbourne needs more housing, and the Preston Market’s location makes it extremely accessible. While we aren’t categorically against any housing being built on the site at all, we do not think that the Preston Market should be sacrificed for housing, nor does it need to be.

Important context is the Preston Activity Centre, a new state government initiative announced in 2025 which will drastically relax planning controls all along and around High St Preston, leading to approximately 14,000 extra new residences being built in the area over the next 25 years according to reporting by The Age. These new dwellings will massively increase living density in the area and will only add to the need for affordable food, cultural connection and open space. (See George explain this in a video here.)

We have been fighting for vital upkeep to the Preston Market for years, working with traders to advocate for the basic maintenance that this space needs as well as redevelopment that could make the market function more efficiently. Loving and wanting to protect this precious community space does not mean that we don’t want to see improvements - we just don’t think these improvements start by razing the site. See this video from George on our plan for renovations for improvements to the Market and how to fund them. 

No, we don’t support any particular political party. When we are able to, we run our own independent candidates in both state and council elections (in fact, in 2022 founding Save the Preston Market Action Group member Gaetano Greco nearly won the state seat of Preston, once the safest Labor seat in the state). When we can’t run our own candidates, we produce scorecards for elections to help those who love the Market evaluate candidates on both their stated intentions and their history of actions for or against the Market’s survival. You will also see us promote and share events or information by political parties on our social media when we see it as beneficial to the Market. In our experience, the way political parties relate to the Preston Market tends to vary widely over time, so we prefer to evaluate each event, election or issue neutrally so we can advocate for the best result for the Market (for this reason we say no to all social media “collaborations” with political parties - sorry!)

Save the Preston Market Action Group supports full public acquisition of the Preston Market, so that this precious community asset can be under community control and can survive for generations to come. Once the Market is publicly owned, decisions about its upkeep and redevelopment can be made democratically, with genuine community input and without the need for developer profits driving every decision 

We have produced plans for what we think the Market could look like (see Zheng talk about some of our ideas in a video here), with parking consolidated into multi-level so that the current car park can be turned into green open space, and better connections with the railway and bike and walking paths. As Bonnie, our ‘in-house planner,’ explains in a video here, as density increases in Preston, the Market can become a space that makes that density worth living in. 

The short answer to this is - yes! However:

• the Market is profitable, so acquiring it would not accrue debt but would take a profitable asset into public control.

• the local Darebin Council and state government can collaborate to acquire and run the Market, splitting the financial burden.

• publicly acquiring the Market would still be a minute fraction of state government spending in a year - even without collaboration with Council. The state government spends about $115 billion per year on running costs and an extra $20 billion per year on buying or public assets. We estimate that acquiring the Market would cost approximately 0.3% of this public asset spending, or around 0.057% of the total yearly budget. 

Most importantly: the Market is worth it. Governments should spend money on things that matter and we know from years of work with the community that the Preston Market is incredibly important - financially, socially, culturally - and is worth the investment.