Portarlington Foreshore Apartments: Third Proposal Returns to 49 Newcombe Street
A contested site on a seaside shopping street is the subject of a fresh development proposal, the third put forward for the same land.
The plans sit at the centre of a long-running local debate about how much building is appropriate on a prized foreshore frontage, and how a town balances growth with the character residents value.
What the latest proposal contains
The owners of 49 Newcombe Street in Portarlington are making a third attempt to develop the site. The latest plans propose 10 apartments across one four-storey building and one three-storey building, along with a retail space and basement car parking.
The application was lodged in July and has been submitted through the state government's Great Design Fast Track program for accelerated assessment, as reported by the Bellarine Times.
Two previous proposals for the site were rejected. The first was refused by the Victorian planning minister in 2021, and the second by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in 2023.
The site sits next door to the town's former post office, on the foreshore side of the main shopping and dining strip. That position is central to both sides of the argument, because it places any new building directly between the street and the water.
Image credit: Portarlington township by Mfunnell, sourced from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. The file page is available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portarlington_township-2w.jpg.
The owners' position
The site is jointly owned by four couples. They bought the property for $2.6 million seven years ago using superannuation savings and have spent more than $1.3 million pursuing development since. Their plans have been reduced in scale from as many as 16 apartments to 10.
Co-owner and group spokesperson Greg Murray said the owners had worked extensively with the state government's design advisers and made every change requested. "This has been the most rigorous exercise," he said. "Every time they've asked us to make changes to bring it into line with what their requirements are, we've done it."
He described a drawn out process of repeated meetings with the Office of the Victorian Government Architects, and said the result is a smaller proposal than the group originally brought forward.
He said the proposal needed to be judged on its merits and considered in the context of the town's continued growth, noting the Qudos development across the road with 56 units in it. "You can delay change, but you can't stop population growth and housing demand and economic change forever," Mr Murray said.
The owners have also said they have no clear picture of the financial outcome. Mr Murray said the group does not know whether the project will make money, but described continuing as the only realistic option given what has already been committed.
The community association's concerns
The Portarlington Community Association has opposed every attempt to develop the site and has long campaigned for the land to become a public park.
The association argues the scale and location of the latest proposal would obstruct views between Newcombe Street and the bay and detract from the village character it says is central to the town's appeal. It also raises concerns about the proposal's scale compared with neighbouring buildings, overshadowing, and potential impact on parking and traffic in Newcombe Street.
Association president Michael Fairweather said the prominent foreshore position made the proposal particularly concerning. "A foreshore multi-storey apartment block will devalue the town's character and identity, just as we win an award for those very features," he said.
He also questioned using the fast track program for this proposal, arguing it should go through the usual approval processes of the City of Greater Geelong.
What the fast track program actually covers
The program's eligibility rules are broader than the association's statement suggests. It is open to eligible developments anywhere housing is permitted under the relevant planning scheme, rather than being restricted to Melbourne or to sites near transport hubs. Eligible proposals must be between two and eight storeys and include at least eight homes.
Both criteria are met on the face of the application, which proposes two buildings of three and four storeys and a total of 10 apartments. The program remains a pathway for assessment, not an approval, and a submission to it does not settle the outcome.
A town with an award to defend
Portarlington was named Victoria's Top Small Tourism Town for 2026 and took bronze in the same category at the national tourism town awards on Tuesday 15 September. That recognition sits awkwardly beside a proposal both sides frame in terms of the town's identity.
Census data adds context to the debate. Portarlington's population was 4,436 at the 2021 Census, with a median age of 62, and 37.1 per cent of dwellings were unoccupied. The mix of permanent residents, holiday homes and visitor trade shapes how locals weigh new development and what it means for services and the town centre.
That mix cuts both ways in the argument. A large share of unoccupied dwellings points to a strong holiday home market and seasonal visitor economy, which supports the case for retail and hospitality space. It also means new residents may not translate directly into year round demand for the services a growing town might expect.
The business angle
Newcombe Street functions as the town's main retail and dining strip, and it depends heavily on visitors during warmer months. Any development on the foreshore side of the street therefore carries commercial implications as well as visual ones.
That pattern is familiar across the smaller towns of the Geelong and the Bellarine region, where visitor trade supports main street businesses through part of the year and permanent population carries them through the rest.
Supporters of the proposal point to the retail space included in the plans and to the additional residents a completed building would bring. Opponents argue that parking pressure and a changed streetscape could affect the trade those same businesses rely on.
Neither claim has been tested publicly. No independent assessment of the proposal's economic effect on Newcombe Street traders has been released alongside the application.
What happens next
The application is with the state planning process rather than the local council, which limits the avenues for direct community input compared with a standard permit application. That is one of the association's core objections and a reason the decision is likely to draw wider attention.
For residents and traders in the region, the outcome will be watched closely because it could set expectations for how other foreshore sites in the Greater Geelong area are assessed.
Development decisions of this kind rarely resolve a debate on their own. Whichever way this one goes, the underlying questions about scale, views and the town's identity are likely to resurface on the next site along Newcombe Street.
For a wider view of how towns across the state are profiled and compared, see the Victoria local guide.
Works Cited
Taylor, James. "Third apartment proposal renews fight over Portarlington site." Bellarine Times, 17 Sept. 2026, https://timesnewsgroup.com.au/bellarinetimes/news/third-apartmentproposal-renews-fightover-portarlington-site/.
City of Greater Geelong. "City of Greater Geelong." City of Greater Geelong, n.d., https://www.geelongaustralia.com.au/.
Mfunnell. "Portarlington township." Wikimedia Commons, 27 July 2006, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portarlington_township-2w.jpg.