Legacy Offloading Tower Approved Site in Sydney’s West

Legacy Property Group is offloading its DA-approved 20-storey mixed-use project in Sydney’s north-west.

An expressions-of-interest campaign closes this week for the 2500-sq-m site, with permission for 132 apartments, five levels of basement parking plus ground-floor retail.

Legacy’s head of strategy and acquisitions Mike Williams said the sale was part of a broader pipeline management exercise, and that the developer would now concentrate on a bigger, neighbouring development in the same street.

“There are a lot of groups at the moment that don’t have sites on their books or pipelines are looking fairly bad,” Williams said.

“We think there’s a number of sophisticated groups which recognise that, and so a DA-approved site gives them an opportunity to capitalise on the underlying demand and lack of supply.”

Savills Australia is brokering the sale of the site—about 12km north-west of downtown Sydney— which has a primary frontage at 14-16 Cottonwood Crescent and secondary frontage to Waterloo Road.  The Macquarie shopping centre and Macquarie University’s main campus entrance are within 250m of the block.

▲ Legacy says it will now concentrate on a bigger, neighbouring development in the same street.

The approved development application allows for 10 studio apartments, 29 one-bedroom, 79 two-bedroom, and 14 three-bedroom apartments.

The project has estimated construction costs of $67.5 million.

Legacy first began amalgamating the 36 units that make up the site in 2017, but ultimately lost out to Chinese developer, Visionary Investment Group.  But when VIG was unable to complete the deal, Williams said, Legacy re-engaged with the owners.

“From our perspective there was a hiatus of more than two years before we were able to pick up the pieces,” he said.  “Now we have the opportunity to realize the value we've created in that site through the amalgamation and the DA.”

Williams said there had been a lot of interest in the site, mainly from local builders and developers.

Legacy would now concentrate on a second MacQuarie Park site—about 5000sq m, also in Cottonwood Crescent, which they expect to realise about 270 apartments.

Legacy said it had built or was building more than 5600 dwellings with a combined value of about $3.5 billion in the greater Sydney area.