Wraps come off Sydney’s newest coastal community
With Little Bay Cove prices to start from $475,000 for apartments, the first soil sod has been turned at the 13-hectare coastal Sydney site, marking the beginning of construction of Sydney’s newest residential coastal community.
Little Bay Cove, set at the southern end of the city’s eastern suburbs coastline, is a $600 million master-planned community being developed by Charter Hall, through its fund, CHOF5, in a development partnership with Malaysian-based, TA Global Berhad.
The site was formerly UNSW’s Little Bay Campus at 1408 Anzac Parade, Little Bay. The university took over the site after sand mining concluded in 1959.
Little Bay hit international headlines when international artists Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude came to Little Bay in 1969. Jeanne-Claude and Christo put Australia on the map of international art when they wrapped the Little Bay coastline in fabric – reputedly the largest artwork produced anywhere in the world.
The site’s history dates back to the arrival of smallpox in Sydney in 1881, when the government set up a temporary quarantine station on a coastal bushland site at Little Bay on the La Perouse Peninsula.
The camp was officially commissioned as a hospital and in 1934 it became the Prince Henry Hospital of Sydney – much of which has now become premium coastal housing estates.
The 13.6-hectare community will include 570 dwellings, with a selection of apartments, courtyard homes and vacant land lots for buyers to build freestanding homes.
The architects engaged by Charter Hall include William Smart, SJB, Fox Johnson and Tony Caro.
More than half the estate is intended to be open space, with the public domain featuring parklands, walking trails, coastal lookouts and tree-lined streets. It adjoins the Coast Golf Course.
Upon its purchase the site had existing development consent for a 149-lot residential subdivision from a 2007 application.
Charter Hall joint managing director, David Southon, expects strong interest in the project. Sales are scheduled to begin in October, once formal Randwick Council approvals are secured.
TA Global Berhad’s executive chairman, Datuk Tony Tiah Thee Kian, says the company had been looking for a property development presence in Australia for some time, to add to its holdings in Malaysia, Singapore, China and Canada.
The group, one of the largest listed property development companies in Malaysia by market capitalisation, owns the Westin in Melbourne and the Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel in Sydney.
The current master plan was approved in 2009 by the Land and Environment Court’s Commissioner Murrell, who ruled the proposal was not an overdevelopment.
“There is a great deal of merit for a development that provides for a variety of housing types with a central core area of open space and the proposal will provide for interest and visual differentiation to provide for the identity that should be welcomed and embraced in this particular area,” Commissioner Murrell ruled.
The neighbouring 85-hectare holding, which was the official Prince Henry Hospital site, has been developed by Landcom, Stockland and other developer partners, with a developable 35-hectare area.
