Bitter Feud Forces Sale of DA-Ready South Sydney Site

Private developer Crown Group is offloading a prime 1.7ha property in Sydney’s inner south—already approved for five residential towers—amid a public falling-out between the company’s two co-founding partners.

Colliers has been appointed agents for an expressions-of-interest campaign for the 16,921sq m block at 44-48 O’Dea Avenue and 52D O’Dea Avenue at Waterloo, 4km from the centre of Sydney.

The property comes with approved plans for 368 luxury apartments and almost 2200sq m of retail built across five very different buildings designed by three well-known global architectural firms—Japan’s Kengo Kuma and Australian firms Koichi Takada Architects and Silvester Fuller.

The Urban Developer understands it could sell for as much as $120 million.

Colliers director of investment services James Cowan confirmed the sale was due to “a partnership dispute” and not “necessarily a stressed sale”, but would not go into further detail.

However, a bitter feud between founder and chief executive of development Iwan Sunito and his co-founder and chief executive of construction Paul Sathio has been playing out in public in recent weeks, across traditional and social media.

The two men, both Indonesian-born and NSW-educated, founded Crown Group in 2015. The group won approval for their flagship development, known as Mastery, in December of 2018.

Crown’s website, which bills Mastery as a $520-million development, says its sales team had sold $40 million in total retail space as of February 2021, but while Colliers says “significant early works” have begun, the site remains empty.

▲ The 1.7ha site in Sydney’s inner south. Colliers says significant early works have been undertaken.

“This is simply one of the last sites left of scale in South Sydney,” Cowan said. “And any other site over a hectare has a long-term existing use subject to leases or has been already activated into mixed-use development.

“You can find 30,000sq m of gross floor area in Macquarie Park and Chatswood, but not split over medium density residential.”

The plans are approved for a gross floor area of 34,537 square metres.

Cowan said the development application included a 6000sq m land give-back to Sydney City Council.

“Where you’ll have public walkways, laneways, parkland, pedestrian thoroughfares through to Green Square.”

The sales campaign formally starts on Monday and Cowan believes there will be a lot of interest, particularly from major build-to-rent players.

“I’d certainly think there’s a strong build-to-rent angle on this particular site given the development can be staged in the five different construction points,” he said. 

“It would not surprise me if a hybrid purchaser came along and did a part build-to-rent and part build-to-sell. For example, you could just pre-commit the whole building, like a whole stage, just to build-to-sell.”

▲ Three different architects were used to design the five buildings approved under the development application. This one is by Silvester Fuller.

Cowan said he expected as many as 15 offers on the site.

“I still think build-to-rent forms a niche part of the market,” he said.

“But I do think they’ll be pricing it most aggressively, so if I was to guess it’s still going to be a third build-to-rent and two-thirds build-to-sell.

“However those build-to-rent operators will all be in the top half of the bidding, in regard to pricing.”

Most recently, Iwan Sunito announced he was launching a new company to provide luxury hotel-style amenity to apartment residents in mixed-use hotel and residential projects.

He told The Urban Developer at the time the first property to become part of the new brand—One Global Residences and Resorts—would be the Mastery project.

Both Sunito and Paul Sathio have been contacted for comment on the Waterloo sale.