LaSalle Lodges Plans for $45m Skinny Hotel

Confidence in Sydney’s hotel market continues to grow as a global fund manager lodges plans for a new slim-profile hotel on Castlereagh Street.

LaSalle Investment Management acquired the Central Square complex at 323 Castlereagh Street in Haymarket for $325 million in 2019.

Since then the group has applied to upgrade the 24-storey commercial tower on the site with a two-storey podium, and now plans to build a 17-storey slender hotel tower on the land between the commercial tower and a neighbouring five-storey substation.

The hotel will be just 9.5m wide.

It will not be making the record books as the world’s narrowest hotel, which is presently The Famous Star in Scotland at about 6m wide, but it is a growing trend in landlocked Sydney.

The Architectus-designed 144-key hotel at Haymarket would match a similar height to the substation on the southern side of the site, with the roofline sloping up to the north creating a “dramatic wedge-shaped form”, which would add to the city’s skyline.

“The proposal is for a 144-key hotel in a new, standalone tower between the existing 1970s commercial office building known as Central Square and the Belmore Park substation,” the design report said.

“This development will facilitate significant improvements to the local public realm including a vibrant new through-site link activated by new retail tenancies.

“By introducing a vibrant new use to an unloved and unused site overlooking Belmore Park, this proposal will contribute positively to the ongoing renewal of the wider Central Station technology precinct.”

The facade of the building features a simple “folded geometry” of dry-pressed face brickwork, with a 6m-wide laneway connecting the hotel lobby and ground floor retail tenancies with the existing commercial building.

A heritage impact statement said the contemporary hotel development would “sit comfortably within its streetscape, and acknowledges the surrounding historical context”.

The site was the location of the Sydney Cattle Markets in the 1830s, and then later the Belmore Markets for fresh produce. In 1910 the market complex was demolished and replaced by Hotel Sydney, and the Adelphi Theatre, both of which were demolished in the late 1960s.

Central Square commercial tower was completed in 1972 and updated to include a two-storey podium in the ‘90s.

LaSalle Investment Management plans to update the commercial tower to refurbish and reposition the asset, which they said would be essential to attract and retain future tenants, and also help to underpin the proposed hotel development.