Decade On, Mandarin Centre Redevelopment Revealed

In a U-turn 10 years in the making, plans are now in progress to redevelop a “retro” Chatswood shopping centre. Early stage plans have been put forward to rework the ageing Mandarin Centre in the Chatswood CBD into a slender 46-storey tower of about 300 apartments, designed by the architects behind Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. The 1990s-built Mandarin Centre at 65 Albert Avenue owned by Capit.el Group has long been earmarked for development. The centre, 100m from Chatswood Interchange, opposite the Westfield Chatswood Shopping centre and 10km from Sydney CBD, has a gym and Hoyts cinema as well as Asian specialty retail and food outlets. Plans approved in 2020 detailed a 22-storey, two-tower project comprising office and a smaller residential component. The new plans propose doing away with the office space in favour of apartments after it was this year recommended for the state significant pathway by the Housing Delivery Authority. Capit.el Group and its founder Eduard Litver have previously worked on luxury hotel and residential projects, notably Pacific Bondi Beach. Litver was also part of the team behind the InterContinental Sydney Double Bay hotel acquisition of $215 million last year. The Chatswood proposal Metis Group have been appointed as project managers, alongside planners at Urbis for the Chatswood site. Metis Group director Arian Galanis said that the Chatswood CBD and Mandarin Centre specifically were “ideally positioned” to accommodate residential growth. “[This iteration of the project] responds to the strong and sustained demand for well-located housing near high-quality amenities, open space, infrastructure and public transport,” Galanis said. Scoping reports and early plans for the project replace the previous 22-storey proposal. ▲ Early rendering of the new Mandarin Centre building that would tower over its Chatswood CBD neighbours. The current Mandarin Centre is a five-level building surrounded by much higher residential and commercial buildings. Now planned is a single 46-storey tower atop a mixed-use podium of 10,000sq m of commercial floor space. The concept design plans from Skidmore, Owings &amp; Merrill Architects, which also designed the One World Trade Centre, describe a “new multi-level retail experience” with apartments above. The early proposals outline 300 units, of which 30 would be affordable. The project will have “generally larger units” from one to three bedrooms aimed at small to medium families, young and intergenerational, according to the early design reports. “A well-positioned and well-designed residential product will be integral in supporting the retail activity, and vice versa,” it said. ▲ The Mandarin Centre on Albert Avenue. Capit.el Group is requesting SEARs for the project to prepare an environmental impact statement for a state significant development application. Long planning history Attempts have been made to redevelop the site for more than a decade. A planning proposal in 2013 submitted to the Willoughby Council initially proposed a mixed-use tower of 70 per cent of residential floorspace. “Previous schemes have faced challenges due to outdated planning controls—such as rigid commercial floor space requirements, and height restrictions—despite general alignment with the council’s Chatswood CBD vision,” Galanis said. However, the council argued that it would be more appropriate as office due to zoning as a commercial core, despite acknowledging even in 2014, “the uncertainties in the current commercial office building market”. After vacillating over site usage, the developer “reluctantly” amended the planning proposal in 2019 to reduce residential floor space to 30 per cent. ▲ Previous plans approved in 2020 went to 30 storeys and included 150 units. Gateway planning proposal approval was secured for the project of two tower forms reaching 22 storeys in 2020. “[However] since the approval, the Chatswood commercial and retail sectors have faced high vacancy rates, subdued demand, and tenant contraction, exacerbated by post-Covid shifts in workforce behaviour,” Galanis said. The scoping report cited BIS Oxford Economics which said it was “not financially feasible” with no major office floorspace additions in the CBD for 30 years. In fact, it said that the total amount of office space in Chatswood CBD is “around the same” as 30 years ago when there were 272,546sq m of commercial space in the area. As such, the new proposal wants to return to the predominantly residential focus originally proposed by the applicant in 2014. “The proposal remains at a high-level conceptual stage, and the project team looks forward to working collaboratively with [Department of Planning], the council, the community, and other key stakeholders to achieve the most appropriate development outcome for the site,” Galanis said.

Decade On, Mandarin Centre Redevelopment Revealed

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