Ceerose Founder Plots 31-Storey Haymarket Hotel

Plans have been filed for a complex reuse project that would preserve a Haymarket heritage building and deliver a 31-storey hotel. 

Samprian, a company associated with building company Ceerose founder Edward Doueihi, according to ASIC documents, has filed the plans with the City of Sydney. 

Ceerose, a top-end building firm active in Sydney, reportedly put the site on the block in 2021 after being approved for another hotel project that did not proceed, but is now looking again to develop the site itself.

The 1030sq m parcel at 757-763 George Street is home to a Federation-era building, the Sutton Forest Meat Company, which was built in the early 1900s. 

Under the plans by Mecone, the heritage fabric of the building would be retained. It, as well as another four-storey building on site, are subject to a fire order that prevents full use. 

The State Heritage Inventory describes the building as “significant for its long association with the wholesale meat trade... Such extensive external detailing is rare in the Sydney area”.

The project would integrate the restored heritage facade of the site with a new infill building at 757-759 George Street. It would also reinstate original elements and remove “detracting” additions.

▲ The Sutton Forest Meat Company was built in the early 1900s. Much of its facade would be retained under the plans.

The non-heritage structures would be demolished to make way for the hotel comprising 28 storeys of hotel floor space delivering 335 rooms, plus two basement levels that would include a speakeasy bar, store rooms and end-of-trip facilities. 

Level one would house function spaces with hotel amenities and a pool, with bar and function space on level two, and a gym on level three. 

Also on level two will be Pepperday Place, a double-height food and drink premises that “provides a sheltered green heart” to the site.

The project, designed by design competition winner Architecture AND, has an estimated cost of $63 million.

“The tower crown contains an expressed frame, extending up to provide balustrade to the roof mount plant and to provide a sense of dematerialising to sky,” the development application said.

A previous planning proposal for the site was approved by the Central Sydney Planning Committee in 2023.

Haymarket and the City of Sydney have been busy with hotel development in the past year despite construction and cost issues. 

A 318-key hotel was approved earlier this year for the edge of Chinatown with another mixed-use hotel filed by Greaton, while developer Landream last week filed to rework approved plans for a commercial tower at Pyrmont to become a hotel and mixed-use development.