VCAT allows Queen Street apartments in Bendigo after review

Developers are now closer than ever to starting work on a building with apartments and businesses along with bold circle-inspired facades.

Neighbours were concerned the building would be too big and bulky for the site covering 119 Queen Street and 86 King Street.

They asked umpire the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to weigh in.

The neighbours also wanted a ruling on the building's likely impact on traffic and parking.

Developers had earlier suggested one way to stop the building looming so large over the street was to "recess" the top storey, so it was set back compared to lower floors.

The City of Greater Bendigo was fine with eventual designs but developers had mixed success appeasing some members of the public's unease.

The tribunal has now ruled the building would be acceptable thanks in large part to the quality of its design and how it will likely sit in the streetscape.

It has also agreed with the council and developers that enough parking spaces had been set aside in the proposed building's basement.

Developers wanted 27 parks, only five of which would be for commercial businesses expected to operate on the ground floor.

That would be fine in the short term while there was enough on-street parking for customers, one neighbour had warned.

They expected there to be less as time went on because more companies would likely move into nearby heritage-protected homes.

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Those sorts of businesses would rely heavily on on-street parking, given it would be so difficult to make enough space on their own properties.

But the tribunal thought there would be enough given the building would rise in part of the city where people often parked hoping to tick multiple things off their to-do lists at once.

"Using existing car parking spaces that are communally available is preferable in such a scenario," member Alison Glynn said in the tribunal's ruling.

She rejected a suggestion developers could simply add an extra basement level as too expensive and impractical.

Most of the basement would be set aside for residents' parking and the tribunal ordered a gate be installed as a sort of early warning system to pedestrians that a car might be coming in or out.

Ms Glynn updated a number of planning conditions for the site.

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