Club’s future in Council’s hands

It’s D-Day for a regional Victorian harness racing club battling plans to close its popular and historic training facility near Bendigo.

City of Greater Bendigo councillors will tonight (Jun 27) consider a masterplan to redevelop the 43-hectare Malone Park recreation reserve with the preferred option recommended by council officers to be the relocation of the Marong Light Harness Racing Club.

The recommendation would pave the way for council to turn the trotting track into other sporting facilities including two additional playing surfaces for football but would evict the trotting club from its base of 50 years.

Marong’s population is expected to quadruple to 8000 people over the next 20 years and council officers are mindful of needing to plan the replacement of ageing facilities and expand to meet the needs of a growing and younger population base.

The Marong trotting track was established through the hard work of local harness racing trainers and owners in the 1970s and the club says the facility is well-utilised by about a dozen local trainers for workouts and at weekly informal trials nights in summer months.

President Wally Newton believes the push to get rid of the trotting track is “overkill” and that the recreational facilities could be redeveloped to comfortably fit two ovals inside the track without interfering with the club activities.

The Council Officers recommendations to tonight’s meeting cautions against that approach, saying it would lead to a “compromised development that would severely impact both the operation of the harness track and the proposed sporting surface”.

But Mr Newton has pointed to precedents elsewhere where sporting clubs comfortably manage combined facilities.

“There are plenty of examples in Victoria where harness racing clubs happily coexist with other sports, at Mildura, Swan Hill, Wedderburn, St Arnaud and Charlton,” Mr Newton said.

“I think it’s up to the council to look a bit more broadly about how they can facilitate that, rather than just shut us down,” he said.

The club enlisted the support of Harness Racing Victoria’s legal counsel, Trots Clubs Victoria and the Victorian Square Trotters’ Association in arguing its case to stay put as well as the Australian Confederation of Motor Clubs, which hosts events at the venue.

The council received 44 submissions on the proposal with nearly half of the submissions received objecting to the relocation of the Marong Light Harness Club.

Council officers have suggested options including moving the trotting facilities 20 minutes away to Sebastian and investigating alternative sites for the harness club.

Councillors will decide tonight whether to follow the officers’ recommendation to remove harness racing from Malone Park and relocate the club, to let the club stay at the facility and develop additional sporting facilities within the harness racing facility or to do nothing.

The draft masterplan lists the trotting track changes as a high priority but does not provide dates for any of the planned developments.

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink