The NSW government has made its first significant investment in a future light rail extension after buying a privately owned site blocking the likely route in Newcastle West.
Land owner Glenn Greedy confirmed the sale would be finalised on Tuesday for the 1200-square metre block behind the Dairy Farmers Corner site in Hunter Street.
The Newcastle Herald understands Transport for NSW paid about $4 million for the site.
Mr Greedy had proposed to build a seven-storey car park on the land, a project that would have complicated plans to extend the tram line from Newcastle Interchange to Broadmeadow.
Newcastle council rejected the car park proposal in late 2022, and Transport for NSW intervened midway through last year when Mr Greedy took the matter to the Land and Environment Court.
The Herald understands Transport for NSW agreed to buy the site almost a year ago and the two parties have spent months negotiating on a price.
Transport for NSW declined to comment.
The previous Coalition government was noncommittal about extending the 2.7-kilometre first stage of the light rail line to Broadmeadow and other suburbs.
The government announced in May that its Broadmeadow "place strategy" included plans for light rail from the interchange to the proposed Hunter Park precinct at Broadmeadow some time in the next 30 years.
Transport for NSW north region director Anna Zycki said in July last year that the government was "keen to finalise this transport corridor to ensure future infrastructure needs are being properly considered."
Ms Zycki said at the time that preserving the light rail corridor also would "provide certainty for developers in the Newcastle CBD, particularly in the precinct around the Newcastle Interchange".
Development company Third.i Group has started preliminary works on a 30-storey apartment complex on the former Dairy Farmers Corner site next to the likely future light rail corridor.
The government's Broadmeadow strategy includes adding up to 20,000 new homes to Hunter Park and surrounding suburbs.
The government is fast-tracking rezoning of four sites at Broadmeadow for apartment towers as part of its push to increase housing supply across the greater Sydney area.
Lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes congratulated the government for securing the corridor land.
"Preserving public transport corridors now will be vital to Newcastle's future," she said.
Business Hunter chief executive officer Bob Hawes said the land transaction "appears to be supportive of a corridor strategy to allow the future extension of the light rail".
He said the extension was "increasingly being acknowledged and recognised in precinct and strategy plans for the sub-region from Newcastle to Broadmeadow and beyond".
"The purchase is proactive and forward thinking and will hopefully resolve constraints and facilitate improved circumstances for planning and engineering of the light rail network in the future," he said.
The former government published a summary of a consultant's business case in 2020 that suggested there was "no urgent need" for a light rail extension.
Mr Hawes said Business Hunter recognised extending the line was "not currently supported based on benefit-cost assessment".
"In view of the potential progress and escalation of delivery of the vision for the Broadmeadow precinct, those circumstances could change in the medium term," he said.
"It would have been disappointing to see delivery constrained, impaired or, at worse, not feasible owing to corridor strategy issues that could have and should have otherwise been overcome."
