Heart of Frankston Campaign

School Students Have Their Say!

The future of Frankston has a big question mark dangling over the top of it for the direction that it is heading. So, the Frankston City Council has set a challenge for students to write how they see Frankston and how they want to see it in the years to come. Some of the things that I will cover include the following areas: Housing, shops, and entertainment, transport, design and community facilities.

In Frankston and the surrounding areas, the conditions of houses are and have been declining for quite some time. I believe that in the next few years, efforts should be made to improve the quality of the 'dumps' that some people are forced to live in. This may include building small cosy apartment complexes that have good access to appropriate maintenance services, or just slowly making attempts to repair some of the conditions that people are currently living in.

About 90% of the shops in Frankston are keeping with the flow and keeping up with the demands of the consumers. Though there is still a small amount that is just throwing away more and more money because of the changes that are occurring everyday in the retail businesses. I'm not saying that we should force these shops to close down, but someone needs to let them know what is happening and how they could improve their sales and once again be up there with the big shops that are continually making profits.

The entertainment side of Frankston has always been borderline good and bad. I think that maybe a few more big shows should be scheduled to boost the popularity of the suburban city. The supple of posters, TV, radio newspapers, are all endless; we should be using these resources and not letting Frankston drift further away from people's first choice of a good time. Maybe an entertainment complex could be built, a smaller copy of something like Federation Square could be on the tables?

The transportation of Frankston is adequate but everyone wants to shine above the rest, and Frankston just has the basics, buses and a train line, maybe we could introduce a tram line through main roads of Frankston and its outer suburbs, this would boost tourism and the amount of people who go through Frankston to shop and reduce the cost of continually buying met cards, which the consumer is always happy about.

The design of buildings all over the world, bar a certain few, has always been pretty basic. Maybe Frankston could take a leading step and build bigger establishment with a bit of a risky but smart look to them. Possibly add a few curves to walls instead of our usual squared off structures.

By Nick Hammill