This is the constraint, but also the opportunity.
This approach provides a practical way to encourage individual decision makers to better align with strategic outcomes, while strengthening economic development practitioners to move beyond individual sites and influence at a township level.
This targeted direct landowner engagement creates a shared reference point that helps people see how their site fits within a broader picture. In doing so, it reduces uncertainty for landowners, builds confidence in decision-making, and lowers the perceived risk of acting.
Just as importantly, it reinforces Council’ s role as a proactive and trusted partner, connecting people, shaping conversations, and creating the conditions for coordinated investment.
At its core, this approach doesn’ t introduce something new; it makes what is already possible clearer, more connected, and easier to act on.
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“ This isn’ t about creating a new plan; it’ s about helping people see what’ s already possible and giving them the confidence to act.” Yarra Ranges CEO Tammi Rose
FROM PROJECT PLAN TO ACTION: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE The Lilydale Investment Blueprint represents a shift from strategic intent to coordinated implementation, building on earlier work to articulate a clearer investment pathway for the precinct.
Mark Irving( Projects 101) was engaged to guide the approach and build internal capability. What emerged was a genuine partnership combining his commercial property and feasibility experience with our local knowledge, relationships, and understanding of policy and community context.
A defining feature of this work was its place-based approach. With Mark, we immersed ourselves in Lilydale, observing movement, connections, and how the centre is experienced beyond what is captured in plans. This reinforced that understanding place goes beyond land use to experience and relationships. This aligned closely with community feedback regarding fragmentation and missed connections( Yarra Ranges Council, 2022).
Over the past year, targeted engagement has focused on unlocking the collective potential of strategically significant landholdings and aligning individual site opportunities, with the scale of this work summarised in the Table 1 below.
TABLE 1.
METRIC Targeted Stakeholders Strategic Blueprint Properties Individual Property Titles Development-Ready Land Commercial Momentum
INVESTMENT SCALE
Many of these stakeholders have held their land for decades; some had not yet considered development, while others have been constrained by feasibility or market conditions.
Conversations created a collaborative environment to explore what is possible, unlocking both individual site opportunities and a coordinated outcome enabled through the Structure Plan and proposed Activity Centre Zone.
Engagement with hotel operators, tourism bodies, and private investors has also provided early market validation, helping to test demand and refine an emerging pipeline of investable opportunities aligned with real market conditions.
As one landowner reflected,“ When landowners can see how their site fits into a bigger picture, the conversation shifts from uncertainty to opportunity.”
From this process, practical insights have emerged. Most notably, the critical challenge in established centres is not a lack of vision, but the absence of deeper, more inclusive conversation and mechanisms to translate that vision into viable projects, particularly in the context of fragmented ownership, constrained feasibility, and uncertainty.
Over 40 landowners and precinct partners engaged 13 distinct large-scale sites 43 interconnected titles ~ 103,510 square metres First commercial build of scale commenced in over a decade
VOL 19 NO 2 2026 32 www. edaustralia. com. au