St Hilliers wants more residential accommodation and less commercial space in one part of its Central Coast Quarter development, near the regional park at Gosford.
It says there is a critical and immediate need for additional housing on the Central Coast to address the housing shortage and worsening affordability.
“Despite there currently being 2,755 apartments proposed for development across 31 projects within the Gosford City Centre, the majority of these are not progressing and will not deliver housing in the short term,” St Hilliers says.
“Therefore, it is critical that suitably-located, ‘shovel-ready’ sites with existing approvals, such as CCQ, be reoriented to focus on the delivery of additional housing in the short term,” the company says.
It has submitted a modification to the State Planning Department – not council as the development is a State Significant project.
The modification is open for public comment.
Originally the concept that was approved was for a building envelope including a podium and three towers comprising a maximum of 39,277m2 gross floor area (GFA) for residential, hotel and commercial/retail uses.
The current application seeks to modify the approval for the Eastern Building to change the land use from commercial floor space to residential floor space.
A previous modification approved the commercial space from the original idea of a hotel.
No change to the building envelope or total GFA is proposed.
The company says in its submission that commercial office is no longer a viable land use for the eastern tower due to evolving economic factors.
The documents submitted to the State department explain that
St Hilliers purchased the site, which was formerly the Gosford Public School, from Government Property NSW in early 2017 through a competitive tender process.
“Since this time, St Hilliers have delivered an A Grade commercial office at 32 Mann Street, which has achieved practical completion and is tenanted to Government leaseholders (NSW Department of Finance),” the submission states.
Approval for a State Significant Development for the southern portion of the site at 26-30 Mann Street known as Central Coast Quarter was given in August 2020.
The approval included:
A building envelope including a podium and three towers, comprising:
‒ Maximum tower heights including:
• Northern Tower up to RL 71.3m and RL 81.4m.
• Southern Tower up to RL 52.6m, RL 58.8m and RL 65.1m.
• Eastern Tower up to RL 71.3m.
The northern residential tower is currently under construction.
