ApartmentsClare BurnettTue 20 Oct 26
Blue Earth Wins Green Light for Tower in Pentridge Prison Precinct
Blue Earth Group has won approval for its 252-apartment scheme at Melbourne’s former Pentridge Prison, expanding its plans for a vacant tower site under Victoria’s Development Facilitation Program.
The site at 45 Pentridge Boulevard, Coburg, was once part of the HM Prison Pentridge precinct, considered Australia’s most feared penitentiary.
It opened in 1851 as a penal stockade and operated as a maximum-security correctional facility until 1997, housing criminals among Australia’s most notorious, such as Ned Kelly and Mark “Chopper” Read.
After being sold, the precinct was transformed into a billion-dollar mixed-use precint, inclusing Blue Earth’s 9506sq m site.
With a development value of $81.5 million, the developer filed its expanded project via the Department of Transport and Planning’s (DTP) Development Facilitation Program pathway earlier this year.
It is Stage 2 of Blue Earth’s project, and occupies the corner of Pentridge Boulevard and Urquhart Street, 9km north of the Melbourne CBD in the Coburg Major Activity Centre.
The project will deliver 252 apartments, 51 more than the originally proosal of 201 units, across three towers.
The apartment mix comprises one and two-bedroom layouts. The building will also include a 235sq m cafe.
Parking for 136 cars and 436 bicycles is included, while coworking space of 149sq m, a gym, sauna and communal lounge and cinema pods are planned for the ground floor and level one.
The Merri-bek City Council originally issued a planning permit for the site in 2018 for townhouses and a mixed-use 16-storey development.
The townhouses were built, but the residential tower on the remaining vacant land has not. The land was subsequently sold to the Blue Earth, which started the Development Facilitation Program process in 2025.
An affordable housing contribution of $2.43 million is being provided to the Social Housing Growth Fund, in lieu of affordable housing within the building.
The planning assessment report said that the Merri-bek City Council continued to support the project and that the development was expected to deliver a “high-quality design outcome” as well as “create visual interest and activation to the streetscape”.
A 16-storey residential building “is well aligned with the built form expectations within this activity centre,” the report said.
The built form is “responsive to the emerging character” of the precinct, minimising detrimental effects on neighbouring properties, including the townhouses, the DTP said in its decision to approve the plan.
“Overall, the development will deliver a positive contribution to the Pentridge Village precinct and increase housing choice within this well-serviced and highly accessible portion of the Coburg activity centre,” it said.
Also on the former Pentridge Prison precinct, Brisbane-based Shayer Group is working on a two-tower residential scheme, approved in 2024, that will rise between the 6m-high bluestone Champ Street Walls and A Division Cell Block.
