Southbank, Victoria
- For other uses, see Southbank
Southbank is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Australia in the state of Victoria. It is in the Local Government Area of the City of Melbourne. It is bordered to the north by the Yarra River, to the south by Park Street, Kingsway to the west, and to the east by St Kilda Road.
The central feature of Southbank is Southgate, a retail, eating, and entertainment precinct on the southern bank of the Yarra River. At the eastern end of the area is the Victorian Arts Centre. Southgate features the iconic sculpture Ophelia by Deborah Halpern, which is the big Y symbol (representing Melbourne) that stands at Bear Brass cafe.
The Queensbridge Precinct, under development in 2005, will include Queensbridge Square, a new pedestrian plaza and meeting place. This plaza links to the north bank and Flinders Street Station via a pedestrian and cycle path developed from the heritage listed Sandridge Bridge formerly used for the Port Melbourne rail line from 1888 to 1987. The formerly disused bridge was opened to the public on 12 March 2006, just in time for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Running along and continuing to the west of the Queens Bridge is Southbank Promenade, and Crown Casino including promenade restaurants. Although it forms part of the Capital City Bicycle Trail, the large number of pedestrians in the area means bicycle riding at high speed is hazardous; advisory signs have been posted to try to keep cyclists at speeds of 10 km/h or less. A future Northbank project will complete the section of the trail on the other side of the Yarra. Across Spencer street is the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, and the Melbourne Maritime Museum.
A Sunday market occurs on the promenade near the Arts Centre. The promenade is also home to several buskers and a pavement chalk artist. The promenade is also used by cyclists on the Yarra River Trail and the Capital City Trail.
An increasing number of corporations are opening their offices in trendy Southbank. The newest addition is PricewaterhouseCoopers, who moved their office from Spring Street to Freshwater Place in 2005. Other names on the list include IBM, Herald & Weekly Times, Fujitsu, and Foster's Group.
There has been a recent increase in upmarket apartment buildings around Southbank. The residential tower of Freshwater Place opened in mid 2005 (and construction was completed in early 2006). Eureka Tower, the tallest apartment building in Australia, is about to be completed (as of mid 2006). There are a number of other such buildings including Riverside Place, Southbank Towers, The Summit, Melbourne Tower and City Tower. Most of them are managed by Melbourne Inner City Management (MICM) a division of Central Equity.
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