Aged Care to Arts Precinct in $180m North-East Melbourne Makeover

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese acquired the home in 1997, in “poor condition” after multiple modifications and annexes, and reused it as Holy Monastery of Axion Estin.

The Greek Orthodox church currently uses the site, 7km north of Melbourne CBD, for offices, homes and a place of assembly. 

Hub and Ratio Consultants have been working on a project to renew the site, dubbed CHORA, meaning ‘place’ in Greek. The site itself is surrounded by low-scale, predominantly detached postwar brick homes. 

The plans will adaptively reuse the former Poor Home into 13 apartments, a 23-room hotel and a book store. The units will be a mix of 3 one-bedroom and 9 three-bedroom apartments, with a one-bedroom apartment located above the church to accommodate the incumbent bishop. 

▲ CHORA will have a 430-patron indoor and outdoor theatre complex.

There will also be an arts and crafts centre with space for 11 small workshops and artist studios, a church, function centre and offices in the refurbished historic building. 

CHORA is taking inspiration from the small creative activities at Collingwood Yards, Collingwood and the Nicholas Building in Melbourne, its application said.

Designed by KUD Architects and heritage architects Andronas Conservation Architecture, the plans aim to restore the “recoverable” features of the Home, and demolish “lower-value” elements. 

On the rest of the site, Hub is planning a duo of four-storey “Grecian-style” apartment buildings of 47 units along Hartington Street. Of those, there will be 6 one-bedroom, 7 two-bedroom and 34 three-bedroom units. 

▲ The former Poor Home for the Aged in Northcote will be revamped, keeping as much of the recoverable heritage site as possible.

Another 22 two and three-storey townhouses are planned along Hawthorn Road. According to an earlier heritage report, the church expects to make $197 million from the sales of residential assets. 

Additionally, the approved plans detail a 430-patron theatre complex on the corner of Hawthorn and St Georges roads, a 110-place childcare centre on St Georges Road and a 150-capacity restaurant on the southern boundary. 

The hotel will be accessed from the south-east and include a 147sq m foyer and reception and a 78sq m hotel bar at the lower ground floor. Parking for a total of 315 cars across four separate basements is included in the plans. 

The church will be retained in its current ground floor location, and the gallery converted into 274sq m of offices to be used by church staff. 

▲ Sister of the Order of the Little Sisters of the Poor travelled to Melbourne from Marseilles in 1884 to establish the Northcote home.

The precinct would be heavily landscaped, with a Greek Australian War memorial and memorial garden, therapy and rain gardens with water features and public lawns. 

The proposal, which is being built by Hickory, has an estimated total development cost of $180 million. 

The DTP planning officers said the proposal was significant in breadth and depth, but that it required further clarification on several issues, namely to do with the theatre operations, traffic and parking issues and residential amenity. 

But they acknowledged that there was “significant public benefit” to restoring the former Poor Home and opening the grounds to the public. 

▲ The Greek Orthodox church has been operating on the site for 30 years.

The Darebin City Council objected to the aggregate scale and intensity of the non-residential uses of the site within a largely residential area, although conceded that the studios and artist spaces contributed to local creative activity.  

With extensive conditions, the DTP approved the project. It said that the proposal marked a substantial rework of a large heritage site and would have significant public benefits. 

Now approved, CHORA joins a slate of projects at Northcote, including Time & Place’s $500-million Northcote Plaza development project which was submitted earlier this year, and Canberra-based Syzygy’s proposals for 256 homes on a former industrial site.