Mirvac Wins Blackwattle Bay Site for 1400-Home Precinct
Mirvac will deliver 1400 homes on one of Sydney’s largest remaining inner-Harbour redevelopment opportunities, securing the 3.6ha former fish market land at Blackwattle Bay.
The group beat Lendlease and Stockland after an open tender run by Infrastructure NSW.
The precinct sits on the Pyrmont–Glebe edge and has been in formal state-led planning since 2015, with rezoning finalised in 2022.
The announcement landed alongside the Minns Government’s plan for Wentworth Park—a separate move used to frame a wider western Harbour strategy.
Wentworth Park sits about 1km east of Blackwattle Bay and remains a greyhound racing venue under a lease expiring in 2027.
Once the lease ends, the racing facilities will be demolished and the land transferred to the City of Sydney for community sports fields and open space.
Surrounding land will support up to 2500 new homes through rezoning, adding to roughly 4800 already planned or approved across Ultimo and Pyrmont.
Combined with the 1400-home Blackwattle Bay precinct, the corridor now has capacity for about 7300 new homes.
Mirvac will deliver more than 1400 homes, including 580 student housing units, along with commercial and retail space and a 26,000sq m public domain.
The government is using both announcements to position a single Harbour corridor built around housing, open space and a new transport spine.
Mirvac said the scale aligns with its urban renewal capability.
“Mirvac has decades of experience in transforming undeveloped sites into vibrant precincts—from Walsh Bay in Sydney and Yarra’s Edge in Melbourne to Cutters Landing and Newstead in Brisbane,” Mirvac chief executive of development Stuart Penklis said.
“These are the sorts of projects where our integrated model comes to life and where we can leverage our in-house design, development and construction capability to deliver much needed housing supply, a key priority for government, and a new precinct the whole community can enjoy.”
Blackwattle Bay anchors the southern half of the Harbour corridor.
The site is between the new Sydney Fish Market and the future Pyrmont Metro station.
The fish market’s completion last month—after a five-year marine build with a 100-million-litre cofferdam and a basement below the waterline—marks a shift in the Harbour’s role.
The building opens in January and is expected to draw millions of visitors each year, reshaping movement, land use and demand along the foreshore.
A new foreshore promenade and boardwalk will complete the missing link in the 15km Harbour walk from Rozelle Bay to Woolloomooloo.
Planned public space includes a central pedestrian lane, cycleways, a skatepark, community kayak storage and a community pavilion.
More than half the precinct will be open to the public, including a 1.1ha waterfront park.
Earlier controls allowed up to about 1200 homes on the old market site.
A rezoning finalised in May lifted capacity to more than 1500 homes by shifting additional floor space into residential use without raising heights or building volume.
The change also locked in a 7.5 per cent affordable housing share in perpetuity.
NSW lands and property minister Steve Kamper linked the decision to the wider Harbour program.
“Today’s announcement builds on our strategic vision for the area,” he said.
“We have completed the new Sydney Fish Markets, we are delivering a new ferry stop, we are delivering an upgraded light rail station, we are delivering the Metro West, and today we are delivering the final piece of the Blackwattle Bay puzzle.”
The renewal corridor now runs from Darling Harbour to Rozelle Bay.
Wentworth Park will become a major open-space precinct once the greyhound lease ends, creating a continuous public link across the inner Harbour.
Metro West will complete the transport spine when Pyrmont station opens in 2032.
Mirvac expects to begin early works in 2027, followed by housing construction from 2028.
First homes are forecast for 2030 and full completion for 2033, tracking with the Metro West timetable.
Blackwattle Bay has been through multiple design rounds and thousands of submissions over many years.
The revised scheme holds the 2022 height limits and increases yield inside the approved envelope.
The project sits close to Mirvac’s multi-award-winning Harold Park redevelopment in Glebe, where the group delivered around 1300 apartments, restored the heritage tram depot and created 3.8ha of new parkland.
Mirvac will target a net-zero-carbon precinct at Blackwattle Bay with a 55 per cent cut in embodied carbon, nature-based interventions to improve water quality and extensive native planting to support biodiversity.
The group will partner with the Sydney Institute of Marine Science and embed stories of Country, past streams and historic shorelines across the precinct.
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