Work is under way on a $150-million luxury residential development on Sydney’s Lower North Shore.

Central Element’s “ultra-luxury” 17-storey residential tower is rising on a site at the corner of Ellis Street and Pacific Highway.

The development is a joint-venture partnership between the developer and equity partner MaxCap Group. The builder is Growthbuilt.

Ethos will comprise 49 apartments in a mix of one, two and three bedrooms.

Central Element described the tower, designed by SJB Architecture and SJB Interiors, whose design was picked via a design competition, as a “wellness-led amenity”.

It includes a “Wellness Studio and Sky Lounge” for entertaining, which it said was a “strong drawcard” for buyers post-Covid. 

Plans for the tower, lauded at the time as the first new apartment development in the area in four years, were filed with Willoughby City Council in June last year and approved in December. 

Completion is planned for early 2025.

▲ A render of Ethos Chatswood: Work on the tower in Sydney’s Lower North Shore is now under way.

The popularity of the Lower North Shore and Chatswood in particular continues to run hot thanks to the council’s moves several years ago to loosen controls.

Chatswood’s CBD Planning and Urban Design was endorsed by Willoughby Council in 2017, and then by the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment in 2020 to guide development of the CBD.

Last month, Goldfields’ 70-apartment residential and commercial tower, The Bryson, near the Chatswood Railway Station and the Westfield Chatswood shopping centre, was approved.

In January, Antaeus Group’s 27-storey, mixed-use building with about 105 apartments was also greenlit.

It’s approval came after the department of planning and environment agreed to amendments to Willoughby’s 2012 local environmental plan, allowing for a maximum building height of 90m for the site at 613-627 Pacific Highway, Chatswood.