Six Years On, Anson Wins Downtown Sydney Approval

More than six years after a global pandemic muddied Australia’s tourism waters and messed with the country’s hospitality industry, the Anson Group has finally won approval for a 318-key hotel in the heart of Sydney.

The Central Sydney Planning Committee this month ruled the 16-storey mixed-use development on the edge of Sydney’s famous Chinatown “is in keeping with the future desired character of the area” and should go ahead.

Plans show the tower will rise on a 1619sq m site at 136 Hay Street, Haymarket, and include a 1580sq m supermarket on the ground and lower-ground floors. The online development monitor BCI Central said the supermarket would carry the Coles brand.

Six other retail tenancies will sit across three ground-floor frontages—at Hay, Pitt and Campbell streets—as well as four basement levels for parking, hotel back-of-house facilities and plant and storage.

A 480sq m restaurant, with seating for 104 and an accompanying terrace bar, will be built on the seventh floor.

Allowing for easements on the three street frontages, the 60.1m tower will sit on a development area of about 1200 square metres.

▲ A similar project was approved for the site in November, 2017 but the approval lapsed and site was sold.

An almost identical hotel project was approved for the site in November 2017, before then owner-developers Linzhu Australia offloaded the property and accompanying hotel approval in September of 2019.

Platinum Hotel Holdings Pty Ltd, which online documents show to be an entity of the Anson Group, paid $91.3 million, settling on the deal in March of 2020—just one week after then prime minister Scott Morrison closed Australia’s borders to all non-citizens and non-residents.

Hotel occupancy crashed to 20 per cent during Covid but as of December last year the rate in Sydney had risen to 77 per cent.

Architectus—the architects first engaged by Linzhu who have been with the project since then—said in documents before the planning committee the site was vacant and excavated in a previously approved development application for early works.

Mainland Civil said it had excavated 18,500cu m from the site to a depth of about 17m in a job it described as “challenging”.

“Anchoring was designed to avoid exclusion zones of multiple tunnels and major service lines which surrounded the project,” Mainland Civil wrote on its website.

▲ A 480sq m restaurant, with seating for 104 and an accompanying terrace bar, will be built on the seventh floor.

“The adjacent Ausgrid substation basement projected 5m into the ground-level footprint and presented a series of challenges surrounding protection and vibration minimisation as the building contained highly sensitive equipment and machinery.

“An existing high-flow sewer line ran through the excavation footprint and a temporary diversion was required to be installed prior to the demolition of the existing structure.”

The excavation cost just over $6 million.

Under conditions set down by the planning committee, the developers must now contribute $1.85 million towards affordable housing within Sydney City Council before a construction permit is issued.

The British multinational InterContinental Hotels Group, marketed as IHG Hotels and Resorts, has been listed as the hotel operator. The group boasts 19 hotel brands within its stable. It’s believed the Haymarket development will carry the Voca name.

Estimated costs for the development are $104.3 million.