ApartmentsPatrick LauFri 18 Sep 26
Traders in Purple Wins Hard-Fought Approval for Pymble Project
A hard-won approval has come for a 76-apartment scheme overlooking a sleepy golf club on Sydney’s leafy North Shore.
The $92-million Traders in Purple project on a 5900sq m parcel next to the Pymble Golf Club has received the tick from a Land & Environment Court commissioner.
The nod comes after the council, planning panel and state-significant pathways were also initiated or refused. Traders in Purple acquired the site at 46-50 Cowan Road in 2025, with a 2023 court approval for 25 luxury townhouses already in place.
The two six-storey buildings may now apply a floor space ratio of 2.2:1 to yield gross floor area of 12,984 sq m, with 178 car parking spaces attached.
After a deemed refusal from the Ku-ring-gai Council, the application was progressed through the North Sydney Planning Panel, as well as the LEC.
The panel rejected the scheme in June over a height variation request, but Commissioner Peter Walsh of the LEC found that a seven-storey section of project is “localised to specific sections of the site due to topography, and does not represent the building's dominant streetscape height”.
In his conclusion, Walsh found that “[t]here remains, of course, a significant difference in scale between the proposal and neighbouring buildings”.
“However, and with a mind to ambitions to address widely understood housing concerns, SEPP Housing’s provisions have changed the building height and density controls upon which consent authority decisions need to be based.”
Separately, SEARS were sought in July for a state-significant version of the project.
That iteration introduced an affordable component of 31 apartments to seek uplift to nine storeys and 150 homes in total. However, The Urban Developer understands that the state pathway will not be pursued following the court approval.
The approval comes less than two months after another for a similarly scaled Prosper project at 5-9 Cowan Road, less than 300m away. That Colin Rahim-led $92-million, 74-home scheme borders the St Ives shopping mall.
It also follows the groundbreaking ceremony at Traders in Purple’s $88-million Finlayson project in late August. That scheme, at 2-10 Finlayson Street at Lane Cove, will yield 48 apartments and new church facilities on land belonging to the Anglican St Andrew’s Church.
