ORANGE could be home to a $35 million eight-storey shopping centre, office and apartment complex if concept plans for the Anson Street car park take off.
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An artist’s impression of the site backing onto Woolworths, which would be one of the tallest buildings in Orange, proposes an 8400 square metre ground-level shopping centre, 80 accommodation or office units over four levels and a three-level car park increasing the spaces available from 300 to 620.
Orange City Council executive projects officer Kathy Woolley said the council spent $60,000 on the concept designs, heritage assessment, traffic management study, financial feasibility and geotechnical survey from consultants Hansen Yuncken.
“The drawings are the culmination of all that work,” she said.
“This is what could happen.
“It might not look exactly like that.”
Mayor John Davis described the units and retail space as modern and said they were designed to pay for the cost of providing more car parking in the CBD, as well as solving ongoing conflict between vehicles and pedestrians at the site.
“What we’re trying to do is increase car parking, which is very expensive, at no cost to Orange ratepayers so the trick is to put it to outside developers,” he said.
Cr Davis said the city needed more retail space, with the one-storey centre a possible place for a department store such as Target, a smaller retailer such as Best and Less and other speciality shops.
General manager Garry Styles said the developer of the site would sign a long-term lease with council, similar to shopping centres in other areas, which Cr Davis said was a bonus for the community.
The proposal only extends to council-owned land, meaning the Cultural Centre on Sale Street and a cottage on Kite Street, currently the home of the Occasional Child Care Centre, will have to be demolished to make way for vehicle access.
As part of the plans, the Anson Street entrance to the site will be pedestrian-only with a glass entry designed to maintain the openness of the back entrances to the Summer Street shops.
Ms Woolley said a green space proposed for the Sale Street side of the complex would be a pedestrian area similar to Pitt Street Mall in Sydney.
Mr Styles said the council considered the Ophir car park on the corner of Lords Place and Kite Street for additional car parking space but went with the larger Anson Street site.
“We’ve done everything we need to be confident that it’s a commercially viable facility,” he said.
“These types of developments can take five years.”
Following a public exhibition period it will be up to councillors whether expressions of interests should be called for the development.
clare.colley@ruralpress.com