United Lodges $137m Entertainment and Residential Plans

United Developments has lodged plans for a major entertainment and housing precinct in Sydney’s south-west. 

The mixed-use project will redevelop a 2.3ha site at 1 to 5 Providence Drive and 2 Huntington Street, Gledswood Hills. 

United is planning a complex of nine buildings up to five storeys, with shoptop housing for 358 apartments. 

The application, lodged with Camden Council, includes a mix of retail, commercial and entertainment uses, including cinema, gym, an 80-place childcare centre, food and drink premises and a supermarket. 

Across two levels of basement, there will be 929 parking spaces, and overall the proposal provides 34 per cent of the site as communal open space.

The project, designed by architects at Marchese, is an updated version of an older development application that was approved in 2021. 

Analysis of the older DA found that it had “become apparent that the amount of floorspace and mix of land uses approved in the DA was not sufficient to deliver a viable or sustainable centre or to deliver the strategic objectives of the Entertainment Precinct”.

Despite extensive marketing, major tenants were not secured due to “unviable floorspace for the supermarket which did not meet the requirements for major supermarket retailers and the number of cinema screens being unviable for modern cinema operators”. 

▲ The site for United’s development is located in the Turner Road Precinct Plan which encourages higher-density development, interconnectivity and local employment opportunities.

Critically, the older DA only included 68 apartments, which the developer said was “not reflective of growing demand for higher-density housing in the area, particularly in the context of deteriorating housing affordability”.

The new development application would deliver more diverse housing and increased supply, it said.

The site is bound by The Hermitage Way to the south, as well as the golf course to the north, and is next to the 100-student Gledswood Hills Primary School, which opened in 2020.

The area is just south of Leppington where huge housing and precinct projects have been launched and proposals have been made for new high-density zoning as Sydney spreads further west and prepares for the arrival of the Western Sydney Airport in 2026, around which much Aerotropolis development is in the works.