Developers push for new city at North Arm Cove north of Sydney

News.com.au

a day ago

Like some Mayan mystery, a fully designed city lies hidden in the Australian bushland just two hours north of Sydney and it could soon become the country's newest settlement.
Located in present-day North Arm Cove, just north of Newcastle in the Hunter Valley, the city includes a complex web of housing lots with plans for train and port terminals and administrative buildings.
For years, it lay dormant as a 'paper subdivision', meaning it has been legally divided into lots but has never been physically developed with roads or power infrastructure.
But that is now changing and a recent rezoning decision means the lost city could soon rise up out of the bush.
'It's going to be developed, it's just a question of how,' Desim Arch architect Dejan Simovic told NewsWire this week.
'It's part of the northern suburbs of Newcastle, so sooner or later … it's definitely going to be developed.'
Mr Simovic and his wife Tatjana Djuric-Simovic are pushing for 'sustainable' development at North Arm Cove and hope to fulfil a vision for the city outlined by legendary Canberra architect Walter Burley Griffin a century ago.
Mr Griffin sketched out the city, which he called Port Stephens City, on 'garden city' principles, typified by expanding concentric rings of development all connected via train.
'You can see that really clearly in the Port Stephens city design,' urban planning guru Sam Austin told NewsWire.
'It has a very central rail terminal and then you can see a concentric circle design that extends out of it.'
The Simovics worry about 'western Sydney' style development engulfing the area and propose instead a 'circular economy' city that is self-reliant at a local level.
'It will be local, precinct based,' Mr Simovic said.
'We're going to have our own treatment plant for water and then generating electricity and data and for the roads.
'It's all based on a circular economy, all based on locals using and reusing water and power and recycling the waste.
'That's the basic principle. We would like to be the first circular city or town in Australia.'
There are powerful reasons, however, why the city has remained bushland scrub for decades.
The area sits within the Mid-Coast Council local government area and the council has long argued development at North Arm Cove would be 'prohibitively expensive' given the lack of any road, power or drainage infrastructure.
The council pushed for the area to be rezoned to 'environmental management', which would have stopped any development.
But in 2024, the state government instructed the council to rezone it into 'environmental living', which has cracked open the door to new building.
'Council has always rejected the notion they could rezone this land because there are too many constraints and the cost was too high,' North Arm Cove Ratepayers Association president David Buxton told NewsWire.
'But all of that seems to have changed in the past five years, for a number of things.'
Mr Buxton said NSW's sharpening housing shortages had in part prompted the state government's rezoning push.
The new local environment plan is expected to come into effect later this year.
There are about 4000 lots at North Arm Cove, with about 1000 of them owned by the council.
There were now 'two entities' eager to build out the area, Mr Buxton added.
Those are Desim and a property developer called Alathan.
Alathan has lodged a 'scoping proposal' with the council outlining how the company sees the future of the area.
'They (Alathan) are going down the investigative path, they are getting feedback,' Mr Buxton said.
'In my way of thinking, they are committed, they are willing to spend the money, as long as they don't get ridiculous hurdles put in front of them.'
The next phase is a development control plan, which is a detailed document that outlines building dimensions, form and scale.
Mr Buxton estimates the cost to produce a plan to be in the range of $5m to $10m.
Mr Simovic said he would apply for federal government grant funding to finance his DEP.
Building out infrastructure for the new city would likely cost north of $1bn, Mr Simovic said.
'We already have interest from infrastructure companies to fund doing the infrastructure and then later managing it and repayments through loans and other things,' Mr Simovic said.
'We have all of that structure set up, the question now is just who is going to fund preparation plans.
'That's where we expect support from the government, just to get the grant from the federal government.'
But there are huge challenges in getting the city up.
Aside from the cost of the infrastructure build-out, any development plan needs majority approval from landholders.
Mr Austin, meanwhile, has expressed caution about building brand new cities.
'I much prefer to see urban consolidation or development around existing settlements, particularly given there is very strong ecological value in that area,' he said.
'I do have some reservations on broad scale development in essentially pristine bushland, which is what it is.'