Perth Voice Interactive

A HEFTY new apartment complex with shops and a tavern is planned for the North Perth stretch of Charles Street.

Developers are hoping to get approval for double the standard height allowance.

The seven-storey $35million proposal would include 59 residential apartments, 15 units specialised for disability or aged care, and 42 micro co-living units for short-to-medium term accommodation. 

It will be built on the site of North’s Perth “Village Square” at 299 Charles Street, a commercial block which has been progressively emptied of its tenants over the past year or so. All existing buildings there are due for demolition.

In the distant past it hosted Brownes Dairy HQ, which relocated in the 1970s.

Vincent council’s built form policy lists a “standard” height of four storeys or 13m for that strip of Charles Street, but Space Collective Architects are hoping that the Joint Development Assessment Panel will allow near-double that at 25.3m at the highest point.

Vincent planners reckon this one counts as eight storeys, but the applicant says it’s more like seven storeys across the majority of the sloping block.

Extra storeys can be granted by the JDAP if a project fits with the “desired future scale and character of the street and local area”. 

The JDAP, a state government body that decides the fate of bigger projects, has been pretty amenable to granting extra height even when the local council disagrees (‘Triple trump’, Voice, December 16, 2023).

Public comment on the proposal is open until February 6 via imagine.vincent.wa.gov.au.

by DAVID BELL