Cheese Burgers, Train Whistles: Bid to Start on Site Earlier

Work is continuing apace on an 11-storey shoptop with 130 apartments above a new Coles supermarket and adjoining liquor store in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

The developer, however, would like the construction to go faster. And wants more hours on site.

Conquest—the 20-year-old, Sydney-based real estate investor and developer—has lodged an amendment for the $80-million shoptop development in Caringbah, seeking permission to be on site from 7am on Saturdays, one hour earlier than its current planning permit allows.

The reason?

Everyone else is making plenty of noise outside normal business hours in the E2-zoned commercial centre….so why can’t we?

Conquest began construction on the 6450sq m site about 13 months ago, but under its current permit all demolition, excavation and building work must be carried out between 7am and 6pm, Monday to Friday and from 8am to 3pm on Saturdays.

But in documents before Sutherland Shire Council, Planning Ingenuity points to some of Conquest’s other Saturday morning neighbours.

About 190m south-west of the site is a 24-hour McDonalds  restaurant. Surely someone is ordering a Bacon and Egg McMuffin, a large coffee and a side of hash browns at the drive-through window before 8am?

▲ Work has already begun on Conquest’s Shoptop development in Caringbah. The developer would like to start work earlier on Saturdays.

A Woolworths supermarket is 240m in the other direction. It opens at 7.am. What, no refridgerated delivery trucks belching and hissing in dawn’s early light?  No public address system calling for an urgent clean-up in aisle four?

“As such, the proposal to extend work hours to 7am on Saturdays is considered acceptable in the context of the site and nature of surrounding land uses,” Planning Ingenuity wrote.

“Furthermore, the site is adjoined by the railway line where trains run before 7am on a Saturday, and as such the locality is not considerably quiet to an extent that construction works beginning at 7am would have a significant acoustic impact on the surrounding properties.”

Conquest, led by chief executive Michael Akkawi, acquired the site from Coles Group in March last year, paying $44 million.

The sale came with an aging Coles supermarket—which has now been demolished—and shoptop development approval in place, including a lease agreement for a new 4073sq m Coles and Liquorland as anchor tenants.

The site, on the corner of President Avenue and Willarong Road at Caringbah, 27km south of Sydney’s centre, is an amalgamation of eight parcels of land with four street frontages.

▲ The site sale came with development approval and a lease agreement for a Coles and Liquorland.

In July last year the developers lodged an amendment seeking 10 more apartments, one additional level to what are effectively two buildings, a new communal roof terrace and more open space.

Two basement levels will provide parking for 167 residents and 255 shoppers. 

“The proposed modifications have arisen as a result of the detailed design development of the project, to improve the efficiency of the building, provide an improved built form responding to the site’s context, to improve the site’s relationship with the public domain and to increase the residential amenity for the future occupants and visitors of the approved apartments,” Gyde Consulting told the council at the time.

Those amendments were eventually approved in March this year by the Land and Environment Court after a series of conciliation sessions between the developers and Sutherland Shire.

Conquest expects the development to be completed by the first quarter of 2026.

And their latest amendment, allowing them to work first thing Saturday morning?

A decision by Sutherland Shire Council is pending.