Parish works with developer to save its church
MELBOURNE: A seniors housing development has been proposed as an alternative to selling a more than 120-year-old Anglican church.
St Saviour’s Church at Meander was on the list of properties to be sold by the Anglican Church in Tasmania to help fund redress payments for victims of child sexual abuse but does not appear on the most recent version, updated on Friday.
Development company Traders in Purple said it had worked with the Deloraine Anglican parish and the Tasmanian Anglican Diocese to come up with an alternative to selling St Saviour’s.
Director Charles Daoud said the company had proposed building eight two-bedroom villas on land attached to St Mark’s Church at nearby Deloraine.
Mr Daoud said the villas would be sold to help fund redress payments.
“The proposal respects the significant historic value to the point that the single-storey villas have been designed to retain important view corridors to the heritage-listed church,” he said.
“The money raised through the sale of the villas will ensure St Saviour’s Church will remain as a community asset for the people of Meander and beyond.”
Anglican Vicar-General Chris Jones commended the Deloraine parish for its “creative response” to meeting its redress contribution.
Mr Daoud said a development application would be lodged with the Meander Valley Council in coming weeks. If approved, work is expected to start early next year.
The Anglican Diocese announced plans to sell 107 church properties to fund redress, parish uses and a new ministry development fund.
That list was reduced to 73 in December.
Figures published on Friday show six church properties are under contract, including St Andrew’s Church and hall in Lenah Valley, St Luke’s Rectory at Richmond and St Peter’s Church at Blackmans Bay, vacant land at Carrick in the state’s North is on the market, and eight buildings and four parcels of land have been sold.
A further 54 properties across the diocese remain on the list to be sold in the next two to three years.
However, the diocese said it was continuing to negotiate with local communities about a number of properties and it was possible some of those properties would not be sold.
