Sydney-based property group, Top Spring Australia, has lodged a Development Application with Lane Cove Council, for a masterplanned community on the 1.26-hectare site at 21-41 Canberra Avenue and 18-32 Holdsworth Avenue, St Leonards.
Consistent with the St Leonards South Masterplan, the Bates Smart-designed plan proposes one apartment building on each of the site’s five ‘superlots’, resulting in 329 residences across five buildings, delivered over two stages – three fronting Canberra Avenue and Newlands Park and two other buildings with a primary frontage to Holdsworth Avenue.
The buildings will be ‘stepped’ in height to accommodate the site’s significant gradient and to maximise views of the adjacent parkland.
The three buildings facing the parkland will be eight, nine and ten storeys in height (some storeys will be part levels due to the site’s incline), while the two rear buildings will be eight and eleven storeys in height.
The plan includes a mix of one, two and three-bedroom apartments, two-storey townhouses and several penthouses, each designed to maximise views of the surrounding green spaces, as well as access natural light and ventilation.
The plan provides public access to Newlands Park from Holdsworth Avenue via a six-metre-wide site link, as well as a 2,500 square metre communal garden at the centre of the project for a mix of public, private and communal uses.
The end of Holdsworth Avenue is to be closed by Council and turned into a pocket park, providing additional public spaces for residents and the local community.
Meanwhile, three of the buildings will feature communal rooftop terraces providing sunny outdoor spaces, and all buildings will have landscaped setbacks from all street frontages.
According to Sydney Ma, Director and General Manager of Top Spring Australia, the building forms step back and down the hillside, revealing a series of stepped terraces, apartments and landscaped platforms towards Newlands Park.
“With this project, we will be consistent with our vision to develop properties that incorporate the character of the local area by not only reflecting, but also enhancing, their local environment,” Mr Ma said.
“Here, we want to create an ecologically responsible, vibrant new community, nestled within lushly planted corridors, edges and setbacks, to further enhance not just Newlands Park, which the project faces, but also the other existing green spaces in the St Leonards area.”
“Inspired by the local Cammeraygal creek corridors, our façade approach interprets the contrasting conditions of the rocky fern gullies and vertical eucalypt forest. This is achieved with the bases of the buildings having a heavily planted sandstone plinth, above which vertical façade columns contrast with floating horizontal edge beams.”
“The buildings will sit comfortably within the urban environment of St Leonards, as well as the bushland quality of the surrounding area, with the material palette using a natural, robust, earthy selection of materials and finishes,” he shared.
“We have worked long and hard on this design and look forward to working with the Lane Cove Council to bring it to life.”