Melbourne’s booming western suburbs are at the center of a high-stakes planning bottleneck, with nine major data centre projects awaiting ministerial approval before caretaker mode freezes government decisions.
Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny faces a hard deadline to rule on more than $5 billion worth of data centre proposals. At the front of the queue is a massive project in Brooklyn, where developer Stockland has applied to transform a 22-hectare distribution centre—equivalent to 11 MCG playing surfaces—into a near $1 billion data hub.
If approved, the complex will stretch from Francis Street to the West Gate Freeway, rising up to eight storeys high with specialised acoustic rooftop screens designed to mitigate night-time noise from scores of industrial chillers.
The proposal is being fast-tracked through the state government’s Development Facilitation Program, a ministerial pathway that bypasses local councils and strips residents of standard appeal rights. Nearly all of Melbourne’s incoming data centre projects have adopted this route as the tech sector races to capitalize on artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
However, the rapid industrial expansion has alarmed long-time locals. Brooklyn resident Carmen Largaiolli, a veteran campaigner for local air quality and living standards, noted that five hyperscale data centres now sit within a 2.5-kilometre radius of her home.
Pointing to nearby expansions by CDC and Microsoft along Francis Street, Largaiolli warned that developers are using multi-stage approval tactics to lock in massive footprints.
“This is what all the hyperscale data centres do: they get an approval for stage one, and then they’ve got all the subsequent stages yet to come,” she said. “As long as they get approval for stage one, all the remaining stages follow.”