Bottle Shop Billionaires Plot Four Towers at Neutral Bay

Investment group Arkadia, owned by rich-list family the Karedis, has filed plans for a a four-tower project on Sydney’s Lower North Shore.

The privately owned property investment group now has plans before the North Sydney Council to amend the Local Environment Plan relating to addresses 166-178, 184-192 and 198-214 Military Road at Neutral Bay, 5.6km north of the CBD.

The group wants to develop a mixed-use project on the site comprising 140 apartments, a 730sq m community centre, and retail and commercial components.

The site was amalgamated from 12 lots.

Arkadia needs an increase of the maximum building height for the site for its planned four slender towers of up to 12 storeys atop a two-storey podium.

It also wants to changes to the non-residential floorspace ratio development standard.

The proposal is supported by a development concept scheme that proposes 20,120sq m of gross floor area, with 2096sq m of retail and 14,724sq m of residential floorspace.

The towers, of 9 to 12 storeys, would share the 140 units between them. 

▲ A rendered overview of the potential built form within the Neutral Bay town centre, including the current project, from the DA.

The application said that despite a series of strategic plans for the Neutral Bay town centre, there had been considerable division within councils that “has resulted in strategic planning efforts either being rescinded … or significantly downscaled”. 

This has rendered growth of the town centre “unviable”, it said.

The proposals optimise “the site’s capacity to accommodate identified demand for housing growth, greater than what is achievable through the existing planning controls”, according to the application.

Ethos Urban prepared the planning application for Arkadia Property Services, which manages assets in excess of $2 billion, for the project, dubbed Grosvenor Quarter. 

▲ A render of the planned community centre. Arkadia is also proposing a plaza for a through-site link to Military Road.

The Karedis family, which began its business on the Lower North Shore 68 years ago, describes itself as “long-term custodians of Neutral Bay”.

Patriarch Theo Karedis and family have a reported net worth of $1.14 billion. The family owns a liquor business and sold a bottle-shop chain to Coles in 2022.

“[The project] delivers much needed housing supply in the area as well as significant public benefits within the Neutral Bay Town Centre (NBTC) while ensuring the protection, enhancement and growth of public amenity,” according to the development application.

Neutral Bay is among eastern Sydney’s blue ribbon suburbs and has consistently attracted developer interest, including Woolworths development arm Fabcot’s plans for a shoptop development that was approved this year, while Central Element was greenlit for its $180-million Pienza project expansion late last year.