THIS is the multi-million dollar redevelopment that almost didn’t happen.

After a drawn-out planning process, the Whitten Oval’s John Gent stand is being fitted out so that it will be ready for use next year.

The Western Bulldogs have leased out 1400 square metres over two floors to Victoria University to create a teaching, learning and research facility.

The university will open up the bottom floor to its students next year, which will include a TAFE School of Sport and Science massage facility and staff area, a Performance Analysis Facility, two shared general purpose tutorial rooms and a shared office space for staff from the School of Sport and Exercise Science and Active West head office.

The new space complements a new major research facility at VU’s Footscray Park campus that will also open next year.

The top floor of the stand will become the temporary home for the Department of Education and Early Childhood’s western region office.

VU will convert the top floor into a 130-seat lecture theatre, Sport Psychology Relaxation Unit and three shared general purpose classrooms once the department moves to its permanent home in Footscray’s CBD.

The stand lies at the heart of the Whitten Oval redevelopment, which is set to be complete by the end of 2010.

VU’s partnership with the Whitten oval is the third prong in what has been named the sports triangle; an exclusive collaboration between the Western Bulldogs, VU and Maribyrnong College, which now operates as a specialist sports school.

“Instead of just being one thing, Whitten Oval, you’ve now got a school, a university and Whitten Oval working together to give the western region a specialised precinct that the whole country should look at as a way of seeing how you can get partners to work together to improve sports outcomes and health outcomes around exercise,” VU Vice Chancellor Elizabeth Harman said.

The development has been praised by the State and Federal Governments, with Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard adding that the Bulldogs were “an important part of the community of Melbourne’s West”.

But 16 months ago, the John Gent stand was a dilapidated building at the centre of a bitter planning dispute between Maribyrnong City Council and the Western Bulldogs that forced the latter to request State Government intervention.

Despite the council approving a Project Management Plan for the Whitten Oval redevelopment in 2006 which named VU as a possible future tenant and named community-based services in the education and training services as part of the development, the council advised the Bulldogs in August 2007 it would need to lodge a separate planning permit for changes to the John Gent stand, because a significant change of use had been proposed.

The Bulldogs lodged the application on 31 March 2008. In May, the council requested the application go through the public consultation process, meaning the permit would go to a vote at the September council meeting.

The application process meant construction on the Whitten Oval redevelopment stopped for up to 10 months.

It also meant that VU could not pay the Western Bulldogs the $6 million up-front licence fee to commence the works until it had been confirmed as a tenant.

On 22 July 2008, the Minister for Environment and Climate Change urged the council to give the application urgent and favourable consideration.

Two days later Bulldogs CEO Campbell Rose sought an 11th hour State Government intervention from Planning Minister Justin Madden, who became the responsible authority for the Whitten Oval and its redevelopment.

Then-Mayor Michelle MacDonald said the Bulldogs had robbed residents of their right of reply and had “bungled the management of the redevelopment”.

“(They) have set up our council as the scapegoat for their own mismanagement; they’ve failed to deliver what they said they would.”

The council had received one objection to the proposal at the time of the over-ruling.