City West Buys Inner-Sydney Affordable Housing Site

City West Housing has acquired a fourth site in inner Sydney to add to its affordable housing project pipeline.

The developer secured the 2440sq m site at 20-26 Bourke Road, Alexandria, via Colliers Sydney South and settlement took place this month for an undisclosed price.

The site is part of the Green Square, a 10-year project to create a 278ha precinct 3.5km from the Sydney CBD.

Green Square covers parts of five Sydney suburbs—Beaconsfield, Zetland, Rosebery, Alexandria and Waterloo—with public transport linking the CBD in under 10 minutes.

CoreLogic property data lists Bourke Road, Alexandria Pty Ltd as the previous owner of the site.

ASIC records show that Jake Andrew O’Neil and Ned Arthur O’Neil as the directors listed for Bourke Road, Alexandria Pty Ltd.

Friend to prime ministers and yachting enthusiast Denis O’Neil has sons named Jake and Ned who work at Addenbrooke, the property investment and development company that Denis founded more than 30 years ago.

The site is earmarked for a fourth affordable housing project, to be named Banksia, comprising 150 affordable rental apartments with an existing cafe, Mecca Coffee. 

City West’s pipeline of affordable housing around Green Square totals nearly 600 homes.

Other sites also around Green Square include the Acacia project with 250 units, the Bangalay project of 104, and the Boronia project with 74 affordable apartments including housing for women and children leaving domestic and family violence situations. 

▲ City West Housing’s designs for the Boronia affordable housing project at Green Square in Sydney.

Rents for residents in the apartments will be capped at 30 per cent of their combined household income.

City West is preparing to submit a development application for the Bourke Road site. 

“Suitable development sites for affordable housing in the inner city that will deliver sufficient yield are hard to come by, so we jumped at the chance to acquire this site with its potential for 150 affordable apartments,” City West chief executive Leonie King said. 

Many sites around Green Square are commercial and industrial sites but the City of Sydney’s Local Environmental Plan for Green Square allows for affordable housing to be built in non-residential zoned areas due to the high cost of residential land. 

“With its proximity to employment opportunities, public transport (between the Green Square station and the future Waterloo metro station) and facilities like the Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre, the site is ripe for redevelopment as housing and strengthens our strategic commitment to developing more affordable housing in the inner south,” King said. 

City West owns 933 homes rented out to more than 1600 residents across inner Sydney.

In October, The Urban Developer reported that Mirvac was pushing on with the latest stage of its Green Square Town Centre development. 

Plans for three buildings at 960A Bourke Street at Zetland have been filed with the City of Sydney.

Sites 7, 17 and 18 would be developed in the proposed $316-million project as part of the multibillion-dollar Green Square Town Centre (GSTC) development.