This plateau of concrete will soon be home to teachers and nurses

Government developer Landcom has earmarked a prime piece of inner Sydney real estate as the first site to be developed under NSW’s $450 million build-to-rent scheme, allowing hundreds of apartments to be built for essential workers such as teachers, nurses and police at subsidised prices.

Located about 20 minutes from the CBD and close to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, the site on Parramatta Road in Camperdown is a former WestConnex tunnelling site identified as part of the Minns government’s long-running surplus land audit.

A government-owned former WestConnex dive site in Camperdown that is slated for redevelopment into homes.Credit: Peter Rae

The plateau of concrete, padlocked for the past two years, will be the first to be developed under the scheme announced by the government last year, which will offer units at subsidised rents for some professions.

The government says at least 200 new apartments will be built for essential workers as part of the development, while about 300 additional units will be private and affordable homes.

Minns said the announcement was important in the context of rising house prices which had forced many Sydney workers to live further from their jobs.

“Essential workers are feeling the impact of the immense cost of housing, and many can’t afford to live near their jobs,” he said.

“The former WestConnex dive site in Sydney’s inner west has sat unused for years, and thanks to our plan to identify vacant land, it will now deliver housing for essential workers close to their jobs.”

An artist’s impression of a new build-to-rent development earmarked for the former WestConnex dive site in Camperdown in the inner west.

The government announced last year that it would build some 400 new subsidised apartments for essential workers such as teachers, nurses and police. The precise discounts have yet to be decided, but Minns previously suggested they would be close to 20 per cent.

The announcement of 500 new apartments at the site is a significant increase on what the government had previously earmarked for the site.

Last July, it said the land would be developed for about 100 apartments “in partnership with the private sector”. The announcement prompted criticism from some quarters because no social or affordable housing component had been included in the announcement.

The government previously promised a mandatory requirement for 30 per cent of homes built on land identified during the audit to be social or affordable but later said that figure would be spread across the quantum of homes built.

The decision to build 40 per cent of homes on the site for essential workers was welcomed by Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne, who has pushed the state government to guarantee more affordable homes in his area.

“We desperately need more affordable housing for essential workers in the inner west, and this project will make a real dent in the problem,” he said.

Byrne said the development would also help to kick-start the revitalisation of the much-maligned Parramatta Road corridor.

“For years, people have talked about the Parramatta Road corridor as being an ideal location for higher-density housing – this project will actually make that happen,” he said.

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