THE Terminus Street car park at Castle Hill will become home to a 500-seat theatre, an 18-storey apartment block and a civic square like Federation Square in Melbourne.
Two weeks before the mayoral election, Hills mayor Peter Dimbrowsky has revealed to the News the plan for the car park, which forms part of The Hills Council's unannounced strategy to transform Castle Hill.
Cr Dimbrowsky has overseen the opening of the Eastern Ring Road and the start of work on the beautification of Old Northern Road.
But that's just the beginning.
"While Castle Hill will still be a retail hub, we will see a lot more commercial and residential development in the town centre," he said.
The council will allow for developments of up to five storeys to be built on the eastern side of Old Northern Road, opposite Castle Towers, which has started its own preparations to extend over to Pennant Street.
The council envisages a ground floor strip of commercial or retail premises in Old Northern Road with apartments overhead.
Cr Dimbrowsky said the council hoped the sloping Terminus Street car park would become "in the next few years" an 18-storey residential tower, a 500-seat theatre and a new civic square that would have television screens and accommodate 1000 people to watch events like the World Cup.
There would also be a multi-storey car park underneath the civic square and a commercial building of up to nine storeys on top of the square.
Cr Dimbrowsky said the building would be equipped with enough solar panels to enable it to create all of its own electricity and to reuse water.
It may be the future site for the council chambers, if the buildings are moved.
"It's open for private enterprise, but we can't wait for everybody to do everything," he said.
"If the numbers stack up, we may do it ourselves.
"We're running the financial models and doing some number crunching and the work we've done is being peer- reviewed."
The council will also lift height restrictions on the other side of Terminus Street to allow for more commercial buildings. It has already approved plans permitting 18-storey buildings to be built in the Crane Road precinct and in Gay Street.
Cr Dimbrowsky said the plans for the revitalisation of a suburb had been developed in accordance with the state government's growth targets for the local government area.
It must accommodate 80,000 more dwellings and 47,000 more jobs in the shire before 2031.
He said that creating a new town centre, which he acknowledged would be unrecognisable from how it appeared 10 years ago, would enable the community to take advantage of this growth.
"We can make this a good thing for everyone," he said.
"We totally understand the lifestyle aspirations of our people and everything that we're doing is in keeping with that lifestyle. We're not ruining the amenity of the area; we're actually improving the quality of life by offering real life style alternatives.
"By putting the development here [in Castle Hill CBD] we're protecting the quiet residential streets."
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