Orange City Council and NSW Government-owned developer Landcom have signed an agreement that will see a new suburb created on the eastern edge of Orange.

Located between Dairy Creek Road and the Mitchell Highway, the new 18.56-hectare development will yield between 200 and 230 lots, with 20-30 per cent to be affordable housing for low to moderate-income households.  

Signing the Memorandum of Understanding at the site last Wednesday, Orange Mayor, Councillor Jason Hamling said this is a step towards delivering more affordable homes for people to come and live and work in Orange.

“It’s really important, you know, a lot of the councillors went to the last election mentioning housing affordability. Our community strategic plan; the number one thing that came back on that was housing affordability. So we've listened and we're doing something about it,” Cr Hamling said.

“We want to work towards making sure Orange has a place for everyone to live irrespective of their income. Housing affordability is a complex issue that requires a multifaceted response. It can’t be solved overnight but we are on our way.”

Whether the affordable housing will be delivered as rental accommodation, housing to purchase or a mix of both is yet to be determined.

Orange City Councilor General Manager David Waddell said the next step is for Council staff to work with Landcom to master plan and design the site.

“With Lancom, we'll effectively design and build a suburb that will then have 20 to 30 per cent affordable housing within it… that will be available to a certain demographic, a certain income level of people coming to Orange or living in Orange,” Mr Wadell said.

“In terms of the city, what we like to see — this is an entrance site of the city, we would like to see a pretty tasteful looking suburb with a mixture of housing — We've done the same in Shiralee. We want to see small houses, big houses, perhaps a couple of unit developments, so that you don't just end up with a monoculture of vanilla-looking houses.

“We'd like we'd like to think that families live here, old people live here, young people live here, et cetera, and Landcom's pretty good at that.”

Under the agreement, Council provides the land while Landcom will finance the development, something Council would not be able to do alone, Mr Waddell said.

Landcom CEO Alexander Wendler added that this agreement is just the beginning of a longer-term relationship with Orange City Council.

“A broader partnership you know that is not only limited to this site. This is the first one which we will do investigations on but we really want to expand it to other sites here in this LGA,” Mr Wendler said, adding that addressing housing shortages in the regions is one of the company’s priorities.

Since 1976 Landcom has delivered more than 100,000 homesites across 240 projects within NSW, he said. But they plan to deliver at least another 25,000 home sites by 2030 with 40 per cent of our portfolio in  Regional NSW. 

The next steps in the development will be to assess the site for access to water, sewer, power and other services, and then commence work on rezoning, Mr Waddell said, but it is anticipated that the first sod could be turned as early as next year.

“Well, the MOU actually says we need to get stuck in pretty quickly,” Mr Wadell said. “It's a very good site, this one. It's got water and sewer services quite close by. It's on two major roads. It's flat, so it's not really a constrained site. I think we can get into this very quickly.”

When pressed on what the new suburb would be named, Mr Waddell deferred the question to Mayor Hamling.

“I think we're putting the cart before the horse here,” the Mayor said. “Let's just get on with building it and then we'll talk about names later on.”