A report in the Herald Sun on Monday said the site for the Melbourne’s second safe injecting room would be at the southern end of Flinders Street, west of Swanston Street.

Initially, the site would have been near Queen Victoria Market on the CBD’s northern fringe, however Former Victoria Police commissioner Ken Lay is understood to be focusing on options in the Flinders Street area say several senior sources of the Herald Sun.

Ben Vasiliou, the chief executive of the youth projects charity, told the ABC that a safe injecting room was needed and having it at the southern end of Flinders Street, near Flinders St station, made sense. He said it was needed “but no one wants it in their backyard”.

Tony Doherty, the owner of Doherty’s Gym on Flinders Street, slammed the idea, referring to it as “a terrible place” despite being close to two stations and existing drug abuse hotspots. Mr Doherty said it would make the area “scummier”.

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The Melbourne CBD is still suffering from the COVID-19 lockdown which saw the area empty of office workers, some which have yet to return due to new flexible working arrangements.

Enterprize Park, located on the north side of the Yarra River which was to have been the planned site of a superpark, between the Melbourne Aquarium and Queens Bridge Street and near many tourist attractions had been suggested as an appropriate site, however Labor MP Gabrielle Williams said there are “currently no plans” though she added the need for an injecting site in the CBD.

“It’s always important to focus on the recommendations around why the City of Melbourne has been identified as an appropriate site for a medically supervised injection facility and that is around the prevalence of drug use and more than that, the impact of that drug use,” she said.

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“There is about a heroin death a month in that area.”

The supervised injecting centre at North Richmond opened in 2018 and has been surrounded by controversy due to its proximity to a school.