After a two-year search for land in one of Sydney’s largest growth corridors, the Mission Property Committee (MPC) has bought a two-hectare site in the south-western suburb of Leppington.
The MPC is charged with acquiring land in “greenfields” or developing areas, funded by all parishes in the Diocese. Leppington was targeted because it is one of the gateways of the new South-West Growth Centre.
It has a railway station – part of the South-West Rail Link – due to open in 2015 and a forecast population growth of more than 50,000 people in the next two decades.
The Leppington site, on Heath Road, cost $2.75 million but has sufficient land area for a new ministry centre and car park, as well as room for future expansion.
MPC chairman Geoff Kyngdon says that “as an added bonus, the site already has a large house with multiple meeting rooms and an outbuilding that could prove very useful in the short term”.
The MPC plans to seek approval for use of the existing residence as an interim Anglican ministry centre. This could be used over the next five years to establish the church and, as funds become available, a ministry centre could be constructed. The committee has also bought a block in the adjoining East Leppington residential release area where a church planter, set to commence in 2016, could be housed.
“To suggest things are exploding before our very eyes in Leppington is to put it mildly, and Heath Road is an excellent example of why we need to get in early in developing areas such as this,” Mr Kyngdon says. “I wonder what the monetary value of the site will be in five years, but of far greater importance is having a bridgehead for the gospel in an area as it develops; even better, a site that could be used for ministry with little fuss from day one.”
It is estimated that there will be rapid population growth of more than 600,000 people on the fringes of metropolitan Sydney over the next few decades.
Synod in 2012 approved a measure for all parishes to contribute $2 million a year to a fund to buy land for church sites in greenfields areas in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
Photo: (left to right): Tony Willis, assistant to the Bishop of Wollongong, Geoff Kyngdon, chairman of MPC and Peter Hayward, Bishop of Wollongong, stand at the entrance to 30 Heath Road in Leppington
