Cast Unveils Mount Hawthorn Mixed-Use Project

Perth-based Cast Developments has filed plans for a mixed-use project at Perth’s Mount Hawthorn. 

The proposed six-storey building at 177 Scarborough Beach Road would comprise nine apartments on the first, second and third floors; three two-bedroom apartments, six three-bedroom apartments and two retail spaces on the ground floor; and a double-storey penthouse on the fourth and fifth floors. 

A basement level would provide 16 carparking spaces and 10 bicycle storage spaces with pedestrian access from the rear Coogee Street parking lot entrance. 

The plans were designed by Bollig Design Group. Mount Hawthorn is 5km north of the Perth CBD.

Plans were submitted to the City of Vincent Council for community consultation prior to their consideration by a Joint Development Assessment Panel (JDAP). 

JDAPs were set up by the Western Australian government to streamline approvals for larger development projects and consist of five-member panels with two councillors and three planning experts. 

Cast Developments development and acquisition manager Andrea Prindiville said the site had been acquired for $1.5 million and the development cost was estimated to be between $7 million to $8 million.

Prindiville said that although they included investors in their target market, many queries have come from single parents.

“There’s a big demand for apartments for professional single parents that have come out of City Beach and Floreat who work in the city and need room for their children,” Prindiville said.

The project is an uncommon example of infill development within existing developed suburbs close to the Perth CBD—Prindiville said demographic and other changes was making Mount Hawthorn as desirable a suburb as many others.

“Mount Hawthorn used to be an area that people would buy into and then as their children got a bit older, they’d go to the aspirational suburbs like Floreat or City Beach—now it’s very much an aspirational suburb,” Prindiville said.

▲ Scarborough Beach Road is the main strip in the Perth suburb of Mount Hawthorn providing direct access from the CBD to the beach.

Perth’s growing urban sprawl has left the Western Australian Government scrambling to keep pace with the need for transport, schools and healthcare infrastructure as new suburbs appear.

It is now Australia’s longest capital city. 

Prindiville said the developer would continue looking for similar sites for future projects.

“It’s just finding the right size we want, like a city or town centre, where people live a very connected life—they can walk everywhere, they’ve got public transport, they can ride their bikes,” Prindiville said. 

Cast Developments is deciding on a builder and hopes to begin construction early next year ahead of a 2026 completion.