ApartmentsVanessa CrollTue 14 Jul 26
Church Topped by 150-Home Tower Proposed for Coffs Harbour CBD
A one-storey church and soup-kitchen site in the Coffs Harbour civic core could make way for a $134-million mixed-use tower with 152 homes.
The Uniting Church proposal for 19A-21 Gordon Street—on exhibition until July 15—is moving through NSW’s Housing Delivery Authority (HDA) pathway with concurrent rezoning to lift the site’s height control from 44m to 90 metres.
The Cortese-designed scheme would include 40 affordable apartments above a new place of worship, the Wesley Hall community kitchen, and retail and commercial floorspace.
Filed by The Uniting Church in Australia Property Trust (NSW), the state significant development application also seeks to increase the site’s floor-space ratio from 4.5:1 to 8.1:1.
Plans would replace an ageing church building, church hall, soup kitchen, second-hand shop, offices and gravel car park on a 2023sq m site bounded by Gordon and Vernon streets and Riding Lane.
Beside Yarrila Place and near Coffs Central, the site is in the city’s civic and commercial heart rather than on a fringe development block.
Gordon Street is already drawing council attention for affordable housing and taller CBD infill.
In January, the City of Coffs Harbour opened an expressions-of-interest campaign for two nearby sites, at 38 and 41 Gordon Street, which it said could suit key worker or student accommodation as part of an affordable housing proposal.
Both carry the same 44m height control as the Uniting Church land, equivalent to about 13 storeys.
City planning and communities director Ian Fitzgibbon said in the council release that the church proposal was slated at 90m, twice the height of nearby CODA, a 12-storey mixed-use apartment building between Harbour Drive and Vernon Street.
“The size of that project would see it go through State Planning, but if 90 metres becomes the new normal then that might be influential for any parties interested in the Gordon Street lots,” Fitzgibbon said.
A HDA expression of interest for the Uniting Church site was filed in March last year, before NSW planning minister Paul Scully declared the project a state significant development in April.
Project documents said the HDA indicated height and floor-space uplift could be supported, although a standalone rezoning would not.
Authority feedback led the project team to test more housing and affordable housing, before a revised application was lodged in August and assessment requirements were issued in September.
Council officers were briefed on the amended proposal late last year and, according to the environmental impact statement, welcomed the increase in affordable housing from 20 to 40 apartments.
Those homes would be managed by Wesley Mission Community Housing for at least 15 years.
The Uniting Church’s Insights publication reported last year the church had been part of Coffs Harbour since 1915, with the Gordon Street site best known as home of the Soupie, a long-running community kitchen providing meals and companionship.
Church council member and long-time Soupie volunteer Phil Crofts told Insights the redevelopment was a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to do more with a key site in the heart of Coffs.
Plans show a five-level podium car park with 173 spaces below the residential tower.
Planning documents said acid sulfate soils and a high water table make basement parking difficult and cost-prohibitive.
An MBM comparison put a five-level basement car park for the same number of spaces at $50.1 million, compared with $14.6 million above ground.
Apartment plans include 34 one, 104 two and 14 three-bedroom apartments.
