Car parks are usually known for their asphalt, not trees, but the Bunnings Warehouse in Sunshine tried their best.
Google Street View, September 2016
With trees flanking the rows of parking.
Google Maps, July 2016
But as part of the 2017 expansion of the store, every tree in the car park was chopped down.
Google Street View, December 2017
And for what – parking bays running in a different direction.
Google Maps, October 2018
The sole improvement to the car park being the addition of a pedestrian crossing between Ballarat Road and the store entrance.
John Hedditch, former City of Brimbank mayor, had this to say on the outcome.
The Planning laws allow this to occur. Bunnings planted new little trees with a watering system and guess what they are still little trees. The planning laws are the problem. That Bunnings is a big local supplier of garden products and environmentally friendly ones at that and still does this is another matter altogether. Don’t worry it was made an issue at the time and we met with Bunnings to try and get a good environmental outcome. We failed. The picture speaks a thousand words.
Footnote
Sunshine was the first ‘big box’ Bunnings Warehouse store in Australia – opened in August 1994 by Jeff Kennett. I guess I’ll have to wait another 20 years for the tress in the car park to grow.
Hi Marcus,
I’ve been following and enjoying your blog posts for a few months. I’m quite active on social media and prefer to share things via Twitter. I occassionally blog too. I live locally to this Sunshine store and would like to share the post on facebook and twitter. Wondering and suggesting that you might make active on your blog site the ability to share on these mediums. it will help with your hits and more traffic your way.
Regards
Graeme
I’m glad you’ve enjoyed my post so far!
I’ve switched on the ‘Share this’ section just above, so you can share links to various social media sites.