11th floor Bennelong trophy apartment set to test the 2014 prestige market
Sydney's ultimate trophy apartment offering is set for a 2014 listing.
The whole 11th floor amalgamation in Sydney's 1 Macquarie Street Bennelong complex is tipped to be offered given the pending downsizing by the Maloney family.
Photo: 1 Macquarie Street, Bennelong
Following the death of her publican husband, Cyril Maloney last August, his widow Margaret has recently spent $10 million or so on the tip of the Darling Point peninsula.
The north facing Darling Point, whole-floor, three bedroom, five bathroom apartment (pictured below) is no shoe box - as it covers 440 square metres of internal and external living space with access to heated pool, sauna, gym, gardens and a sandy beach.
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But the redundant Bennelong apartment offering will come with 715 square metres of space. It apparently stretches 82 metres end to end.
It was briefly up for sale in 2010 for about $30 million through estate agent Michael Pallier, who could be presumed to be in the running for the forthcoming listing.
The late Cyril Maloney shelled out $13.9 million in 1999 for all four apartments on the 11th floor in the Bennelong complex, set on Macquarie Street directly behind the Opera House.
Maloney created a penthouse with a cellar, billiard rooms and, needless to say, terrific views of Sydney Harbour. He also then added another above him on the 12th floor, but that's sans staircase.
The third-generation hotelier Cyril Maloney, born in 1919, in Henty, NSW left school at 14 to help the family after the Great Depression.
Maloney's beginnings as a hotelier began with his wartime savings kitty of £3,000 to buy the Railway Hotel in Orange.
Then came the Regent Hotel at Broadway in the Illawarra, the Wallerawang Hotel, the Freemasons Hotel in Broken Hill, the Railway Hotel in Parramatta, the Great Northern Hotel in Chatswood, the Shellharbour Hotel, the Olympic Hotel in Moore Park, the Bondi Astra, Cronulla's Cecil, the Hornsby Hotel, the Metropole Hotel in Cremorne and the Hampton Hotel in Kings Cross.
The jewel in the crown was the Hotel Bondi, which Maloney owned for four decades.
Owning more than one unit has been de rigueur in the Bennelong block - but to consolidate, not necessarily amalgamate the interiors.
Developer Jim Bosnjak had two adjoining fifth-floor, three-bedroom apartments.
The Moran family bought their third adjoining unit for a, then record, $16.8 million on the 12th floor in 2008.
One-time pie man Ian Allen, of Sargents Pies fame, did his amalgamation of two units on the 10th floor off the plan in 1999. Allen then bought three others as investments.
