The diocese created a taskforce to 2015 to consider whether St Andrews Church should be purchased, engaging a number of heritage experts, architects and engineers to survey the Kirk before entering negotiations. 

But an agreement was struck between Ballarat Central Uniting Church and developers The Macneil Group for the property earlier this week, to the disappointment of those lobbying hardest. 

Christ Church St Andrew’s Project chairman Andrew Greenwood, who led the bid for the Anglican Diocese to acquire the site, said he felt they’d been frozen out of discussions in favour of developers. 

“Three to four weeks ago, [Melbourne’s Uniting Church] told us they were aware there was some difficulties with a different developer’s proposal, but if it broke down, they would get in touch with us. So we’ve waited,” he said. 

But news of the Uniting Church’s agreement with The Macneil Group, Mr Greenwood said, came “out of the blue”.

“In the ten days leading up to this arrangement, we’d attempted to contact them every single day, but they didn’t answer our calls,” he said.

The diocese planned to covert the inside of St Andrews to make it appropriate for Anglican services, while using the parcel of land as a home for Anglicare’s social work. 

Anglican bishop Garry Weatherill is more contemplative about the sale. He said while they were interested, there were “issues with the property”, and it was “increasingly clear” the Kirk was going to be sold elsewhere.

“There are lots of other issues for us as a church, like what happens about redress payments for victims of abuse, we’re cautious about engaging in big, capital projects, and that’s really what the Kirk would have been for us,” he said. 

Ballarat Central Uniting Church Council spokesperson Adriana Strickland said, “To sell a church is a difficult and painful decision but congregation members have voiced support of the sale as a means to build outreach and nurture activities in Ballarat and support the activities of the wider church.”