By ANNA USHER

A 42-storey tower packed with homes for the elderly is set to rise in Crows Nest – and turning it into seniors housing has won developer Freecity extra height North Sydney Council fought to keep off the skyline.

The building would be Australia’s tallest seniors’ community, a 140-metre sky city of about 173 retirement units and 24 aged-care rooms stacked above Pacific Highway, run by aged-care giant Anglicare.

Freecity has torn up the 178 luxury apartments it won approval for in November. In their place, it wants a vertical retirement village at 378-398 Pacific Highway, directly opposite the new Metro station, and the change of use is what lets it build bigger.

The vertical village would work as retirement accommodation and a nursing home rolled into one tower, so residents can stay put and move into higher care as they age without leaving the building.

Seniors housing also unlocks a floor-space bonus that lifts the density on the 1,980sqm site by a quarter, and pushes the height limit to 138.8 metres, above the 135-metre cap set for the block.

When Freecity’s first 40-storey tower went on public exhibition, North Sydney Council objected that it broke the 135-metre limit, warning it would weaken the planning rules along the Pacific Highway corridor. Freecity trimmed the design to fit, and the state approved it on 28 November 2025.

The senior’s version now sits above that line again, two storeys taller than the block already approved.

Council’s hands are now tied. It is not the consent authority for the tower, and its own file on the project tells residents to take their views to the state’s Major Projects portal. The Planning Minister has the final say, and the department issued the assessment rules for the new scheme on 23 July.

The Cox Architecture-designed tower would hold about 173 independent living units, most with two or three bedrooms, and 24 residential aged-care rooms, with wellness, rehabilitation and consulting rooms, communal dining and landscaped terraces.

Two levels of aged care would sit in a four-storey podium above ground-floor shops. Eight basement levels would hold about 160 car spaces, below the 193 the rules ask for, which Freecity says the Metro on the doorstep makes up for.

The seniors part of the job carries a build cost above $60 million, with affordable housing promised equal to 10 per cent of the homes. The scrapped apartment version was valued at more than $600 million.

Freecity says the project started as apartments for sale before market research found strong demand for seniors housing across the lower north shore. It points to the short walk to Royal North Shore Hospital, Crows Nest village shops and the nearby bowls club.

“Research increasingly shows that seniors want to remain in vibrant urban communities,” Freecity co-founder and joint chief executive Lawrence Zheng said.

Anglicare, which recently became a national operator after buying Infinite Care, would run the building. General manager James Poulos said the plan would let people “age gracefully in the place they call home”, with care on hand as their needs grow.

If it is built, the tower would overtake Levande’s 28-storey Epping building as the tallest of its kind in the country.

Freecity expects to lodge the full application late this year and start work in 2028 if it is approved. The plans go on public exhibition first, and that is when locals can have their say.