Urban Renewal

We are blessed with some of the city’s most strategically-located properties. Our job is to put these properties to work in service of the Kingdom.

One of the distinctive things about the Anglican church and its parish system is that we have a physical presence in so many communities.

So, as our city has developed over hundreds of years, each new community has tended to have an Anglican church right at its heart – geographically as well as spiritually. As a result, we are now blessed with a host of property assets in some of the most strategic locations across the Diocese.

At SAP, we want to be put these properties on mission by delivering high-quality projects that provide upgraded ministry facilities as well as much-needed community infrastructure – such as affordable housing, disability services and childcare.

In other words, we’re taking a good look at the assets we currently have, identifying the ministry and community needs in the area, and then developing a plan to deliver the kind of project that will serve those needs and bless the generations to come.

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Urban Renewal Pilot Program

That’s where SAP’s Urban Renewal Pilot Program (URPP) comes in. The URPP was established in 2020, in partnership with Sustainable Development Group to:

• accelerate development on existing church sites to materialise ministry/evangelism plans into built form;
• provide high quality master planning, a feasible funding strategy and seed funding to enable parishes to complete the Development Application (DA) process;
• arrange long-term leases for integrated social infrastructure development, when a funding partner is needed;
• provide a parish with new ministry/evangelism infrastructure, retain ownership of land, generate an ongoing income source to finance debt and then generate income stream shared between parish and wider Diocese;
• enhance ministry/evangelism facilities and cause interfaces or ‘accidental collisions’ with the non-church community; and
• create a sustainable funding source for new churches and existing churches for utilisation by the next generation of Christians.

And because we’re not just interested in short-term gain, we tend to favour social infrastructure projects because of their missional value in addition to a sustainable financial return. These types of projects allow SAP to show care and compassion for sectors of the community that can often be overlooked or marginalised. Examples include:

Affordable housing	Youth recreation facilities
Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA)	Crisis accommodation
Student housing	Key worker accommodation
Aged care/seniors living	Shared office space
Childcare	Ministry housing

Importantly, all the projects we undertake under the URPP are tied to a strong and well thought out ministry and evangelism plan, the development of which is often the first step in any plan to invest limited financial resources.

To read about our completed Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) project at Beacon Hill, click here.

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