Vision Land Takes New Tack for Sydney Courthouse Site

Vision Land is once again advancing a plan to replace an abandoned Brutalist courthouse and a Victorian-era orphanage with an 86-home development.

Since acquiring the site from the NSW Government in 2014, Vision Land has made a number of attempts at the project, with little progress. In the intervening years, the site has become a noted haven for squatters and vandals, with the developer unable to secure temporary commercial tenants. 

A request for SEARs has now been filed, with the developer attempting to secure the State-Significant Development pathway. 

The site at 357 Glebe Point Road, 2km from the Sydney CBD, is home to the abandoned Bidura Children’s Court and Metropolitan Remand Centre, a five-storey concrete ziggurat built in 1983 and shuttered in 2017. 

Also on the 5556sq m site is the 1860 Edmund Blacket-designed Bidura House, along with a detached 1870s Italianate ballroom. The property also has other substantial outbuildings from the same period, including stables and secondary homes, as well as gardens. 

The most recent proposal calls for two towers of 10 and 11 storeys with a total of 78 apartments, including 14 affordable, as well as eight attached homes. 

Although only 250m from the Glebe Light Rail station, the site is excluded from the Low and Mid-Rise planning pathway and is zoned E1 Local Centre. The project is also less than a kilometre from the new $1-billion Pyrmont Fish Market, and the burgeoning residential development hub at Blackwattle Bay.  

▲ Terrace houses, seen here in a rendering from 2021 plans, would help fill out the irregular shape of the site.

The DKO-designed proposal is applying for a floor space ratio of 1.95:1 with a gross floor area of 10,827sq m, the maximums permitted for a 30 per cent affordable housing bonus under the Housing SEPP 2021.

Typologies are 12 one, 24 two and 50 three-bedroom apartments. All 14 of the affordable units would be in one of the two towers. Parking spaces for 103 cars, eight motorcycles and 95 bicycles would be included, as well as 1502sq m of landscaped area.

Vision Land plans for demolition to begin in mid-2026, and completion in two to four years.

In 1920, the heritage-listed Bidura House Group of buildings was acquired by the state, which used them as an orphanage. The current proposal suggests that a separate application will follow, pursuing the development of the Bidura House Group into a single home.

▲ Architect Edmund Blacket designed the site's Victorian Regency house, as well as the University of Sydney's main building and St Andrew's Cathedral. 

The Children’s Court, designed by the NSW Government Architect JW Thomson, is also listed on many non-statutory heritage registers. However, the building’s architectural and cultural significance has not been officially protected on the State Heritage Register. 

The City of Sydney rejected an initial three-tower DA and pushed for heritage listing in 2017, but Vision Land won approval on appeal in the Land and Environment Court in 2018.

Vision Land again filed a DA with the City of Sydney, this time in 2021, seeking 58 apartments in two towers and seven terrace houses. The approved form included stepped towers to emulate the current building’s ziggurat shape, but has been rejected in the most recent proposal as prohibitive in cost.

Early work has begun at the site under that deferred DA. The Sydney-based developer and property investor has also pursued projects in Shanghai and Hangzhou.