Mixed-Use Tower Wins Approval on Cremorne's Church Street, Adding 280 Homes to Melbourne's Squeezed Inner Ring

Victorian Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny has signed off on a 22-storey mixed-use tower at 414–422 Church Street, Cremorne, greenlighting 280 apartments, ground-floor retail and co-working space in one of the inner city's most contested development corridors. The decision, handed down on Wednesday, ends a 27-month approval process that drew objections from the Boroondara end of Richmond's residents' association and a counter-campaign from the Urban Development Institute of Australia's Victorian chapter urging the state to act faster.

The timing is deliberate. Melbourne's rental vacancy rate sat at 1.2 per cent in May according to SQM Research, and the Victorian Homebuyer Fund's waiting list has swelled past 11,000 registered applicants. State government planners have been under sustained internal pressure to approve medium-to-high density projects within five kilometres of Flinders Street Station rather than continuing to push growth toward the outer ring where infrastructure lags housing delivery by years.

What the Church Street Project Actually Delivers

The tower, designed by Fender Katsalidis with developer Caydon Property Group as project manager, sits on a consolidated site between Cremorne Street and the Swan Street intersection — an area that has transformed from light industrial to tech-office and hospitality within a decade. The building will include 42 dwellings designated as affordable housing under the amended Ministerial Amendment VC243, with those units capped at 75 per cent of market rent for a 15-year covenant period.

Studio apartments in the approved plans start at 38 square metres, a size that has drawn criticism from the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) and some local architects who argue the state's planning framework still permits units that fall below liveable standards. Cremorne's median unit price is currently tracking around $680,000, roughly 10 per cent above the broader metropolitan unit median of $620,000, reflecting the suburb's walkability score and proximity to the Richmond and South Yarra train stations.

Boroondara City Council had submitted a formal objection late last year, citing traffic modelling on Church Street during school pick-up hours near Balmain Street. The Planning Minister's delegate dismissed those concerns, noting the project is within 400 metres of two tram routes — the 78 and 79 — and a 600-metre walk from Richmond Station on the Alamein, Belgrave, Glen Waverley and Lilydale lines.

Pressure on the Supply Pipeline Is Not Letting Up

Wednesday's approval does not exist in isolation. The state government's Housing Statement, released in late 2023, set a target of 800,000 new homes across Victoria by 2034. As of the March quarter this year, planning approvals were tracking at roughly 52 per cent of the annual run-rate needed to hit that goal, according to the Department of Transport and Planning's own monitoring dashboard.

The inner suburbs — South Yarra, Prahran, Fitzroy and Cremorne itself — account for a disproportionate share of the shortfall because existing character overlays and neighbourhood-level opposition have historically slowed council decision-making. Planning Week, held in Melbourne each April, has increasingly become a flashpoint for that tension, with the Property Council of Australia using this year's event at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre to table data showing median approval timelines for projects above 10 storeys have blown out to 34 months.

Construction on the Church Street site is unlikely to start before mid-2027, given that Caydon must first discharge a series of pre-commencement conditions including a heritage impact report for the adjacent red-brick warehouse at 410 Church Street, which sits on the Victorian Heritage Inventory. The first residents, on current timelines, would move in around late 2029.

For buyers watching the Cremorne and Richmond markets, the practical read is this: supply relief from this project is at least three years away. Anyone buying off the plan here — if Caydon opens sales in the coming months — will be doing so against a market that has consistently appreciated through previous construction cycles. Stamp duty concessions under the existing off-the-plan duty reduction scheme apply to purchases below $1 million, which should cover the bulk of one- and two-bedroom configurations in this building. Check the Victorian State Revenue Office's eligibility calculator before signing anything.