From car yards to smart apartments and on-trend eateries, the transformation of the Victoria Park strip has begun, with the latest development up for approval being an ultra-contemporary apartment complex at the prime corner development site opposite the Victoria Park Hotel landmark.

State frameworks that want to concentrate urban property development around major highways with good public transport have translated into precinct planning by the council, with the flipside that land uses such as car yards are likely to become less common as premium inner-ring suburbs’ land values rise.

The proposed development will be voted on next Wednesday. Credit:Artist's impression

Frank’s Barbecue Texas Smokehouse opened just over a year ago in a former used car yard on the strip, and its roadhouse-type design is an example of how the Park’s history need not be lost, retaining the concrete yard for a no-frills industrial-chic alfresco that nods to the owner’s American south origins, and serving food of the sort licked off fingers on roadsides everywhere.

Now, 400 metres away, a four-storey $4.5 million complex with 17 apartments and two ground-floor office tenancies will overlook the landmark heritage-listed pub on its almost 1000-square-metre former car yard site.