A third developer has lodged plans to enlarge an historic building in the Hunter Street Mall to well above the height limit.
City of Newcastle is assessing a development application for a five-storey addition on top of the 1875 Newcastle School of Arts building with frontages to Hunter, Wolfe and Scott streets.
Sydney's Berkelouw retail family, which owns the Harry Hartog and Berkelouw bookstore chains, bought the building from the council in 2015 and plans to open an eponymous book shop on the ground floor.
The existing two-storey building also will contain two levels of parking, accessed off Scott Street, beneath five new floors of apartments.
The remodelled building, to be marketed as "The Library", will be 28 metres, eight metres above the prescribed height limit and approximate to a typical nine-storey building.
Last month, the council approved modified redevelopment plans for the nearby Municipal Building in Hunter Street, increasing its height to 26 metres. In 2017, the council approved an as yet unrealised 25-metre redevelopment of the AA Dangar building almost next door to the School of Arts.
All three projects are between the harbour and Iris Capital's huge EastEnd high-rise residential complex.
Planning documents lodged with the Berkelouws' development application make reference to the other approvals when arguing for a variation to the height limit.
"In the same block a number of approvals have been issued for built form that both exceeds the height standard and seeks to retain the heritage character at street/ground level," the documents say.
The application says the Berkelouw family bought the building "with the express intention of developing the site in such a manner that firmly acknowledged the original use of the building as Newcastle's first public library".
The School of Arts is listed as an item of local significance on the NSW heritage register.
The register says the structure is "historically important due to its civic association as the earliest remaining building constructed for Newcastle Borough Council".
The proposed redevelopment's parking garage includes 23 spaces and a car lift connecting the ground and first floors.
All but one of the units have three or four bedrooms.
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