Sydney skyline transformation to continue as Charter Hall pitch near-$1 billion skyscraper
The Sydney CBD skyline is to continue its transformation from old to new.
Property development and funds management giant, Charter Hall has filed plans with the City of Sydney Council for several new buildings, one a 55-level mixed-use tower at 201-217 Elizabeth Street, on the corner of Park Street and opposite Hyde Park.
The 3,900 sqm corner site is currently home to a 38-level commercial office tower with a retail plaza at the lower ground level that has underground pedestrian connections to Museum Station.
The new $924 million tower will incorporate both hotel rooms and apartments, as well as ground and podium-level retail and hospitality spaces.
Proposed is a genuine mix of one, two, three and four-bedroom apartments. On offer will be 67 one-bedroom apartments, a rarity in the new apartment market, as well as 123 two-beds, 58 three-beds, and 16 four-bedroom apartments.
The apartments will start from level 12. Levels one to 11, the podium will home 441 hotel rooms.
The design, spearheaded by design competition winner fjc studio, introduces significant urban enhancements, from minimising overshadowing on Hyde Park to creating accessible pedestrian spaces, making the site a distinctive entry point into the city.
fjc studio designed a tri-partite tower with three sections in various heights and orientations, aiming to create an “urban repair” along the Elizabeth Street streetscape, reconnecting the area visually and physically with neighbouring sites.
fjc studio said the proposed development at 201 Elizabeth Street will be targeting an exemplary level of sustainability performance, benchmarked against the most progressive definitions of sustainable development in the Australian marketplace.
"With a targeted 5 Star Green Star Buildings v1 rating, a 4 Star NABERS Hotel Energy rating, a 3 Star NABERS Hotel Water rating and BASIX targets that exceed the minimum compliance level, the building will meet a holistic definition of sustainability through design, construction and in to operation," fjc studio noted in its submission to the Sydney of City Council.
fjc won the design competition for the development in late 2018.
The Jury reached a unanimous decision in recommending fjc’s scheme as the preferred winner of the competitive design process fjc studio proposed a tri-partite ‘cluster’ of finely proportioned elements for the tower, each at a different height and orientated towards the north east in a varying fan alignment.
The alignment of each element maximises views from apartments to Hyde Park and Sydney Harbour.
Elizabeth Street is set to look completely different in the next decade.
Other developments down the prime street that is just one of three developable roads on Hyde Park include Central Element's 271 Elizabeth Street. The $100 million development, with 53 apartments, will replace the 16-level Hyde Park Inn hotel. The apartments will sit above several retail tenancies on the upper and lower ground floors.
Alternative asset manager, Fife Capital, also has plans for a 17-level tower at 139 Elizabeth Street. The plans are for just 26 apartments in a building that will be predominantly made up of office space. The tower will sit alongside a heritage-conscious redevelopment of the George Bosch Chambers and St James Hotel building that has stood since the 1920s.
