This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
AFTER years of deliberating over its future, the Cyprus Community of NSW (CCNSW) has put up for sale its expansive club site in Sydney’s inner south-west, which could make way for a new $165 million residential and commercial precinct.
Selling agents from Cushman & Wakefield are expecting residential developers, student accommodation providers, affordable housing advocates, build-to-rent operators, private hospitals, and education institutions to show interest in the 9,129 sqm site at 58-76 Stanmore Road in Stanmore, six kilometres from the CBD.
The site has three street frontages and potential for up to circa 190 apartments and a gross floor area of 16,202 sqm, the agents said.
Tom Barnier, who is managing the listing with Cushman & Wakefield colleagues Kieran Tsipidis, Tim Cassidy, and Fab Dalfonso, said, “This is undoubtedly the best development site in the inner city of Sydney”.
“The scarcity of residential stock in NSW has created immense demand for opportunities like this.”
The listing comes five years after the club’s board, faced with millions of dollars of debt and looking to go into administration, briefly engaged another real estate agency over the site, before elections saw a new group gain a majority on the board and change tack.
A decision to create the Cyprus Capital Company and refinance the property with shares being made available to community members, and the successful push to rezone the land to mixed use and residential gave the group some breathing space. Proposed plans to redevelop the site into four buildings, one of which would be partially retained used by the community, were knocked back by Inner West Council, before the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment granted approval a year ago for up to 120 townhouses and apartments dwellings, and 1,550 sqm of commercial and club floor space on the site.
Having continued to operate at a loss, the board called an extraordinary general meeting in October that gave members the option to stay at the site and redevelop, or sell, and purchase a new property to relocate the club to.
Some members, led by Dorothy Bassil, held concerns that the resolutions and the EGM documents did not provide adequate information on the consequences of either outcome, and the October EGM was cancelled. Another EGM was called for February 11th and members again felt those issues were not addressed.
“The members were being asked to decide about selling or developing a potentially $100 million site at Stanmore, based solely on the views of a board that was not qualified to advise them,” Bassil said in a letter addressed to the community’s board ahead of the planned February EGM that was ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court.
Michael Kyriacou, the CCNSW president, told Neos Kosmos in February, “Clearly the community is divided about staying or selling and I do not think there is a clear majority on either side”.
He told the publication, “The next step is going to be the definitive step about the future of the club’s location”.
“I do not think there can be any other way out than a compromise.
“There is a strong move from some of our senior members to stay and there is an opinion from some younger people that want to go to a big park somewhere and I think we can do both successfully.”
The valuation of the club has been estimated at between $80 million and $130 million.
Meetings had been held since over the future of the site.
