An accountancy firm will occupy half the slender tower its principal wants to build while the other half, residential and retail, will deliver him rent as a secondary income under plans filed in Parramatta.
The development application lodged with the City of Parramatta council proposes flattening the site and building a 10-storey half-and-half building.
The site, at 12 Union Street, is within Parramatta town centre, walking distance to Paramatta train station.
It represents a “rare opportunity to redevelop an undersized and undercapitalised site within an established town centre”, according to the application.
Fifty per cent of the site—the bottom five floors—will be dedicated to residential, delivering nine serviced apartments with a retail component on the bottom floor.
The remainder will be allocated to office levels, accommodating a total of four separate office suites with a total floor area of 521 square metres.
As an infill development, the design aims to align the floors with at least one of the adjoining buildings, to “create a homogeneous streetscape design and [provide] continuity with the dominant form of the podium”.
The applicant and developer of the site, Peter Steliou, principal of Steliou and Associates accountancy and tax advisory business, will move his offices to the building.
The serviced apartments will serve as a source of secondary income, owned and managed by the applicant.
Existing development on the site is a small-scale, two-storey commercial building, which the application said represented a “gross undercapitalisation of valuable land situated within a significant regional centre”.
The current built form is inconsistent with the evolving higher-density built forms along Union Street.
AUDAA is the nominated architect for the project.
Parramatta is a Sydney development hotspot, with a large number of projects from the likes of Gurner investing in multi-million-dollar projects, as well as smaller developers taking a piece of the action.
