Church plans tower on gay Sauna Site

St. Mark's Coptic Church in Preston. Photo: Luis Enrique Ascui Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/church-plans-tower-on-gay-sauna-site-20110524-1f2ig.html#ixzz1NL8kcBnh

Australia
Miki Perkins
25/5/2011

The Coptic Orthodox Church has applied to build a 42-storey tower – including a church and theological college – on the former site of the city’s longest running gay sauna.

The $80 million proposed development at 279 La Trobe Street, near the corner with Elizabeth Street, will become an ”urban mission” for the Melbourne diocese of the church.

The tower will be built on the former site of Steamworks, which operated for more than three decades and closed in 2008. The church bought the buildings for $6.35 million last year.

Father Mark Attalla said the church hoped to create an iconic building in Melbourne using striking religious motifs, including six huge stained-glass windows and a 5th-century Coptic cross motif that will adorn the glass and metal cladding of the tower.

The new centre would provide a place of worship for its 18,000 followers and offer financial and spiritual support to the church’s mission in Fiji.

The planning application includes a 360-seat worship area, bookshop and soup kitchen. The building will also have 280 apartments.

Asked about the location’s former use as a gay sauna – the faith does not condone homosexuality – Father Attalla said with a laugh: ”I think God has a purpose for everything and I’m sure he would have understood the use of that.”

Melbourne University academic Dr Graham Willett, author of Secret Histories of Queer Melbourne, hopes the church will commemorate the site’s history with a pink plaque.

”I like to imagine the ghosts of those gay men drifting down the aisles,” he said.

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