City block Corio blocks – but not its own

Corio land-owners ripped off by unscrupulous salesmen decades ago now face a future with their blocks declared protected grasslands.
Adjoining land proposed by the city for industrial development has been exempted from the city’s own protection order.
City Hall, which owns more than half the New Corio Estate, and an unquantified number of lots and road reserves in the adjoining Geelong Ring Road Employment Precinct, made the order this week.
New Corio Estate property owners had protested that the vegetation on their land was no different to that on the industrial land but a two-person panel declared the NCE native vegetation more important than that in the industrial precinct.
The New Corio Independent Land Owners Group, set up last year, has been campaigning to overturn bans on building due to zoning restrictions.
The estate comprises some 600 blocks of which many were sold around the 1970s by door-to-door salesmen to migrant unaware the land had not been zoned for residential buildings. Prices ran as high as $7000 at the time.
The subdivision – situated on the east and west sides of Corio’s Shell Parade and next to Geelong Grammar – was declared old and inappropriate by the State Ministry of Planning 30 years ago.
Many blocks are now owned by the offspring of the original buyers who dispute claims the land can’t be developed because of sewerage problems. They say talks to develop services at the estate have been rejected and are bemused by the emergence of native grassland as an issue.
The city has been buying blocks for $1000 recently but its offers have risen to around $3000.
A recent city officer’s report to the council suggested the protection order “may potentially result in an increase in the value of these lots’’.