A UNIQUE $100 million development for Leeds Parade near Charles Sturt University overcame a major hurdle when Orange City Council voted unanimously on Monday night for it to proceed to the next level of State Government approval.

“I feel like we've won the 100 metres and now we're just waiting for the medal presentation,” said spokesperson for the developers Mick Fabar.

The development includes a seniors living and aged care facility, a 295 student accommodation facility close to the university and 100 dwellings.

A residential development component of 300 village lots is proposed to support the university village development.

A village centre is also in the plan, designed as a community focus for the student accommodation, aged care, technology park and rural residential components of the scheme and retail and commercial facilities, as well as accommodation and conference facilities.

Mr Fabar said the Orange development, which has involved rezoning of the land, had been a long and complex process.

“But it is something out of the traditional mould and like no other development we have ever seen in this area,” he said.

He said the development would create enormous opportunities for local employment of contractors on-site.

Mr Fabar said as soon as the proposal is approved by the State Government work will begin to attract facility specific developers.

“That could involve a number of different developers and while the work will be staggered for the different facilities, we are aiming for them to be happening as closely together as possible,” he said.

In a report tabled at Monday night's Sustainable Development Committee meeting, council staff noted the proposal is partially inconsistent with the broad recommendations of the Rural and Industrial Lands Strategy recently submitted to council and was at odds with the preferred approach of dealing with individual rezoning submissions as part of an overall local environment plan review.

However, council staff noted that as the rezoning has been ongoing since 1995 and has previously been endorsed by council and the Department of Planning, the economic benefits to the city were a reason the proposal should continue to be supported.