THE on/off sale of the Fremantle council’s old youth and childcare centres on Quarry Street is on again, with the sites set to go up for auction.

The site is a key interface between the CBD and Fremantle Park, but two previous attempts to sell them for medium-density housing have failed.

In December 2013 the council offered to sell the site to a developer friend of mayor Brad Pettitt, pushing through a quick deal so he could apply for tax credits on affordable housing – so quick its publicly released business plan contained misleading information.

But the NRAS affordable housing scheme was abolished before Mr Moriarty could get funding, so the council tried selling the site for a Baugruppen co-op.

That failed to get traction when interested groups couldn’t convince the council to drop a requirement that the site be purchased outright before development.

Since then the council has demolished the youth centre and initiated an amalgamation of three lots, due to be approved by the WAPC some time this month.

A report to the council’s finance committee last week said there had been strong interest from developers looking to build townhouses.

“The reasoning behind this preference is a recent flood in the market in unit options and a lot of interest from current unit owners wanting to upgrade to larger, yet easy to maintain homes,” the report said.