Freecity Ramps Up Co-Living Pipeline at Rockdale

Developer Freecity is busy lodging co-living plans in Sydney, filing two large-scale projects in less than a month.

The latest plans could add an eight-storey building with 130 co-living rooms, metres from the Rockdale station, according to documents filed with the Bayside Council.

It follows the filing of a 505-unit, 19-storey tower at Macquarie Park near the university last month.

The plans designed by COX Architects include a lobby, communal space and a cafe on the ground floor, and landscape plans by Arcadia for the site at 23-25 Frederrick Street, Rockdale.

Plans also show 15 car and 130 bicycle spaces to be shared between the commercial and residential tenants. A laundry would be on the top level. 

The lower floors would have 20 rooms per level while the upper floors would have 10, each suitable for two residents but allocated to one person per room.

Freecity’s early plans for the 956sq m site proposed 200 co-living units creating for the project that is valued at $65 million.

The property was sold as a vacant possession in May, 2023 and currently has a two-storey commercial building with basement parking.

The estimated cost of the filed project is $19 million and, like the Macquarie Park project, it works to make the most of recent NSW government planning reforms to encourage higher-density living.

▲ The plan of management for Rockdale Residences was prepared by co-living operator Unilodge although the eventual operator has not be finalised.

The NSW government wants 75,000 homes to be built every year from a base of just 48,000 completions in 2022.

Minister for planning Paul Scully said this would be a big challenge to meet a 377,000 housing goal over five years.

“We are reforming planning rules to support the delivery of thousands of new homes and a pipeline of housing supply into the future, and are determined to meet our housing goals,” Scully said. 

“If there’s no supply, there’s no homes for the next generation. The NSW government is not going to turn their back on housing, it’s a basic need.”

The reforms introduced in December, 2023 included changes to low and mid-rise housing, altered infrastructure contributions and rezonings within 1200m of eight priority transport hubs.

There are also affordable housing floor space ratio bonuses and the publication of performance tables of council progress across the state.