This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
MIRVAC’S new plans to replace the Harbourside shopping centre with a high-rise tower and marketplace are headed for rough seas after Australia’s largest private hotel investor, Jerry Schwartz, pledged to rock the boat and torpedo the property giant’s proposal.
The redevelopment would have about 87,000 sqm of total floorspace including commercial, retail and residential space, and a 357-apartment tower that would now be in middle of the site.
Mirvac paid $252 million for the site in 2013 and is the long term leaseholder. Initial redevelopment plans were submitted in 2015 and received widespread objections from the public, the Sydney Harbour Association and the City of Sydney.
This is not the first time Mirvac has raised eyebrows. In 2019, Mirvac lodged a new plan for the site, proposing a commercial office above a redeveloped shopping and commercial centre. Amendments have been made that included a 12.5 metre tower height reduction, shaving the number of apartments down from 364, increasing car parks to 306 and relocating the tower to the site’s centre.
Included in the new plans are an observation deck, outdoor cinema with 250 seats and a marketplace with floating walkways.
Hotel mogul, developer and cosmetic surgeon Jerry Schwartz, who owns the adjacent Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour, said development plans in favour of a massive residential tower should be rejected outright, adding that previous New South Wales planning bodies had rejected proposals for the project to include residential, and that decision should stand.
However, Mirvac produced yet another design for the site which re-introduced a residential tower as the major element in the development plan.
“The residential focus of the development proposal goes totally against the tourism, entertainment and retail concept of Darling Harbour,” Schwartz said.
“The proposal will also block out views from a number of existing hotels, even more so with the plan to move the tower from the originally planned northern end to the centre of the site.
“When I bought the Sofitel at a very substantial cost prior to its opening, there was a condition that no building would be built on the Harbourside site for 15 years. Clearly, the Mirvac proposal is in direct contravention of that condition.”
He said the plans represented the development of a massive residential tower under the guise of redeveloping the existing shopping component.
“The rest of Mirvac’s proposal – the commercial and retail – is just a smokescreen for what is the ultimate end game: a massive residential development which goes completely against the ethos of the original Darling Harbour design concept.”
Also on the bay, GPT Group and AMP Capital have just announced Copenhagen-based Henning Larsen’s urban park centred scheme as the winning concept for the 73,000 sqm Cockle Bay Park redevelopment.
The plans feature a new 10,000 sqm retail podium with a 63,000 sqm commercial office tower above, reconnecting the city to Cockle Bay and the Pyrmont Bridge with a leisure and cultural precinct from Barangaroo Reserve to the International Convention Centre, and providing a rare sizeable area of public green space along the Darling Harbour waterfront.
