westsidefreshside

St Albans is changing - fast. There are so many great benefits to living here, and it’s well on its way to becoming a place that you’ll wish you bought into sooner. You know what I’m talking about - think Brunswick, think St Kilda, think Footscray.

Food is a massive reason to fall in love with St Albans. When it comes to groceries, you’ll find everything you need at a great price at Big Sam’s Market, KFL, the local IGA and Woolworths and heaps of other local stores. There are so many cuisines to sample at local restaurants, from Vietnamese (Fresh Chilli Deli in St Albans = the best banh mi in Melbourne!) to Indian to Lebanese to Korean to Eastern European.

There’s plenty of parks and green space to stretch your legs and get out of the hustle and bustle of the main street. There’s even a community garden you can get involved in! It’s an affordable place to buy, even today - I challenge you to find better value in a home at the $500-600k mark with fantastic proximity to the hospital, the airport, the city, places to visit such as Brimbank Park and bigger shopping centres such as Highpoint. Awesome place for families to live affordably and quietly while still being able to head out elsewhere with ease. Lots of daycare centres and schools, from cute kindergartens all the way up to Victoria University. Plenty of access to public transport through the new and improved train station and lots of bus connections too. There’s so much investment in St Albans and so much to look forward to in the near future, including an upcoming state-of-the-art aquatic centre with gym facilities.

Don’t get me wrong, St Albans has some lingering problems…quite a bit of dumped rubbish (mattresses. How do people have so many mattresses?). Brimbank Council have been so responsive to our dumped rubbish reports though, and are clearly on board with helping make the area a better place. Everyone needs to contribute in order to create a better community. There’s a lot of promise in St Albans, we just need to work together and have some pride.

Yes, there is the usual main street loitering, public drinking and evidence of drugs on occasion. I would argue though, which main street doesn’t have this, at least sometimes? But it’s an older crowd and you can see that St Albans is truly changing around them. For example, even during COVID, the Alfrieda Street Civic Plaza was freshly redeveloped with a new layout of benches and plants. The old scene isn’t going to last, and it’s more than balanced out by young families and friendly locals doing their thing. For a fun look at life in St Albans and all of the great things going on, including some very sweet profiles of local restaurants and shops, you gotta check out the @stalbanstowncentre Instagram account!

Overall, we love living in St Albans and look forward to seeing it continue to grow and evolve.