UrbanGrowth Central to Eveleigh Urban Renewal and Transport Program 2014-15 Business Plan

Contents

SITE PLAN    4

1. Executive Summary            5

1.1 Project Description           5

1.2 Project Ambition & Objectives     7

1.3 Strategic Overview           7

1.4 Market Research   10

 (part of index
redacted)

5. Project Strategy      25

5.1 Concept Plan         25

5.2 Statutory Planning Pathways        25

5.3 Community engagement strategy 26

5.4 Sustainability Initiatives   27

 (part of index
redacted)

Appendix 2: Draft program – see attached PDF document    34

Appendix 3: Concept Plan      35

 (part of index
redacted)

 

SITE PLAN

 

1. Executive Summary

1.1 Project
Description

The Central to Eveleigh Urban
Renewal and Transport Program (C2E) is an ambitious project that targets
development of 80ha of mainly State Government-owned land and the airspace
above the Central to Eveleigh railway line. The Project is in a prime location,
strategically positioned to support Sydney’s CBD growth, adjacent to large
universities, health facilities and vibrant inner city neighbourhoods.

The development projects will
consist of:

• Development of super lots for residential and mixed use
  outcomes on excess Railcorp land
• Redevelopment of Redfern and Central stations to
  incorporate future transport service needs and significant residential, retail
  and commercial floor space
• Potential development of podiums over operational rail
  assets to access airspace development rights

The Project has the potential to
add 9,000 dwellings and more than 300,000sqm of commercial space, creating
space for more than 15,000 jobs.

 (Part 1.1 redacted)

1.2 Project Ambition
& Objectives

Ambition

Create a steady series of
successful development projects over the next 20 years with each stage adding
to the living and working vibrancy of the immediate neighbourhoods and greater
city. Demonstrate successful incorporation of higher density residential and
commercial outcomes by achieving excellent urban design, local connectivity,
public space and community facility outcomes.

Objective

Identify a technically and
commercially feasible pathway to develop Railcorp owned land in the Corridor
by:

• Identifying a series of short term (0-5 year) projects
  that allow delivery of new housing and employment opportunities complimentary
  to the surrounding community
• Developing winning business cases for redevelopment
  projects for Redfern Station and Central Station precincts (‘Grand Central’) as
  medium to long term catalysts to unlock value in the entire corridor/region
• Delivering excellent connectivity, public space and
  community facility outcomes able to balance the perceived negative impacts of
  urban densification

1.3 Strategic
Overview

Justification

The Corridor can be justified
for project development expenditure due to the satisfaction of several positive
urban renewal indicators including:

• large scale housing and employment potential
• location directly adjacent to public transport and
  employment access
• large scale government land ownership
• catalyst sites at North and South Eveleigh.

The ‘challenge’ for C2E will be
to:

• identify the optimal mix of government/private sector
  risk and return and associated funding and finance methods
• identify the correct staging and wholesale development
  parcel delivery framework over short (0-5 year), medium term (5-10 year) and
  long term (10 year plus) periods.

  (Part in
middle of 1.3 redacted)

Wider Economic Benefits

• Houses and jobs will be located dose to the city,
  existing public transport nodes and existing infrastructure services creating
  economic efficiency outcomes relative to other locations.
• Allows for expansion of the Sydney CBD increasing
  agglomeration economies by further creating connections between industry
  clusters, educational and health facilities.
• Can attract major employers from interstate and
  internationally adding outright to Gross State Product (education, R&D,
  ICT, creative industries).

Benefits to the Local Community

• Housing : 9,000 homes, improved diversity and targeted
  housing affordability outcomes
• Employment: local space for >15,000 jobs
• Transport connectivity: Improved existing walk and bike
  connections across the corridor, new cross corridor walk and bike connections
  and new north/south linear connections (Central to Erskineville).
• Quality and quantity of public domain: Creation of new
  high quality and activated public spaces – renewal of existing public domain
  especially at Redfern Station.
• Local heritage and culture: Revitalised heritage
  assets, enhanced experience of heritage and more opportunities and spaces to
  support cultural activities.
• Community facilities: Provision of new community
  facilities including schools.

1.4 Market Research

Residential development key
indicators (1) BIS Shrapnel Inner City Apartment Outlook 2013-2020

• Highest and best use for projects in the corridor
  ($10-12k per sqm completed product)

• Strong price growth experienced in Redfern/Waterloo
  area (may be challenged by high supply 2014-2016 especially in Waterloo)
• Apartment sizes dropping steadily with mix of studio
  and 1 bedroom apartments increasing based part on affordability and part on
  increased number of 1 person households
• Strong value proposition in relation to close CBD
  location, culture/character of area, public transport services indicate ongoing
  strong demand and price growth

Commercial development key
indicators (2) CBRE Research report commissioned for C2E UrbanGrowth NSW 2014

• Commercial values likely to trade on expectations of A
  Grade rents at a set discount to core CBD Prime and A Grade accommodation
  (equates to $5-6k per sqm completed product)
• Greatest demand for campus type accommodation in
  competition with Macquarie Park and other major middle ring business parks –
  C2E should trade at a premium to these lesser located areas
• Central Station the likely high rise commercial offer
  but needs to compete with existing 17 years supply available in core CBD areas
  (refurb and new)

Retail development key
indicators (3) CBRE Research report commissioned for C2E UrbanGrowth NSW 2014

• Historic retail proposition in area has been poor due
  to high student/low to middle income demographic
• Recent apartment boom and ongoing gentrification has
  seen retail proposition change and improve – Broadway one of the highest
  grossing retail outlets in Sydney
• Central Park (20,000sqm), Broadway (45,000sqm) and the
  retail strip at Newtown are the nearest competitors
• Central Station is arguably underutilised as a retail
  facility given the high patronage of the facility
• Scale of proposed development in Redfern/Eveleigh will
  support a significant retail project (sufficient for full line supermarket anchor)

Key feedback from development
industry soundings (September 2013-May 2014)

• Residential development is significantly more viable
  than commercial from Redfern to
• Eveleigh – residential use is the highest and best use
  across the entire Corridor
• Redfern and Central Stations provide significant retail
  opportunities
• The Central Station locality provides the best
  opportunity for commercial office development but premium and/or A grade office
  development unlikely to be feasible for 10-15 years
• Development alongside operational rail assets requires
  pre agreed design and construction standards to reduce time and cost risk in
  the development process
• The Government will need to part fund and potentially
  deliver over rail items of infrastructure due to the prohibitive cost and risk
  and seek return of costs through long term development profits/land value
  uplifts
• The Corridor should be broken into a series of smaller,
  marketable development projects
• Suitable overarching planning controls (allowable
  heights, floor space ratios/envelopes, land use etc) need to be established at
  a State level to provide comfort on planning risk

(Next 14 pages redacted may
include some of Executive Summary)

5. Project Strategy

5.1 Concept Plan

See Attachment 3 (Publicly available document)

5.2 Statutory
Planning Pathways

The preferred statutory planning
pathway needs to deliver an outcome that achieves:

• The desired long term built form, land use and public
  benefit outcomes identified
• An appropriate level of planning control that delivers
  the identified outcomes but retains
• developer flexibility to tailor applications based on
  market demands and innovation
• An approval process that appropriately reflects the
  need for TfNSW to play an integrated approval role
• A consent authority that has the capability and market
  credibility to be perceived as efficient and low risk by the private sector

 (Part Page Redacted)

5.3 Community
engagement strategy

Central to Eveleigh has the
benefit of an active and engaged local community. Various community actions
groups are already in place with Redwatch being the largest and best organised.

The strategy for community
engagement has three parts:

I) Proactive and early – the
community will be engaged proactively before final concepts and masterplans are
finalised and before the formal statutory planning process has begun. The
stages can be summarised as:

• Concept planning – development of precinct vision,
  design principles, identification of local factors that shape key planning
  outcomes
• Specific issue planning – development of a
  specific-vision on critical issues such as precinct connectivity, public space
  design
• Masterplanning – precinct urban design options that
  indicate the location and scale of built form, roads, public spaces etc
• Statutory planning – mandatory exhibition of final
  planning proposals

2) Provision of multiple methods
of communication to access a representative cross section of the immediate
local and regional community. These methods will include:

• Overarching project and specific issues based focus
  groups with targeted selection
• Overarching project and specific issues based focus
  groups with existing local community action groups
• Web based survey to access much larger and broad based
  regional samples
• Active web based discussion forums
• Web based library providing access to historic and
  contemporary project information

3) Integrated community
consultation across urban renewal and transport infrastructure initiatives

• Community benefits will most often be realised at C2E
  through a combination of transport and urban renewal initiatives – for this
  reason it is proposed that a collaborative approach is always applied between
  TfNSW and UGNSW
• TfNSW and UGNSW will jointly approve any new information
  being issued into public forums to ensure the priorities of each are correctly
  represented.

5.4 Sustainability
Initiatives

For C2E the key sustainability
opportunities that will form the basis of a targeted sustainability strategy
include:

• Reduced car dependency – increased walk and bike
  outcomes (reduce the carbon footprint and pollution outcomes of the project)
• Investigation of precinct scale wastewater recycling,
  heating and cooling schemes, renewable energy schemes through private developer
  delivery most likely in the Redfern and Central Station redevelopment projects
  (reduce the carbon footprint and water footprint of the project)
• Housing diversity and affordable housing strategies
• Aboriginal heritage, culture and training and
  employment support strategies

Other typical sustainability
target areas (biodiversity, waste management, building thermal performance,
social inclusion, further climate change measures etc) will be workshopped with
the City of Sydney to establish if UrbanGrowth’s role can contribute further in
these areas.

The UrbanGrowth NSW developed
PRECINX tool will be used as a basis to calculate overarching sustainability
outcomes and to set benchmarks for performance.

 (Next 6 pages redacted)

Appendix
2: Draft program – see attached PDF document (not released)

Appendix 3: Concept Plan – Central to Eveleigh
Corridor: Concept Plan (already public)

See Draft Concept and Key Issues summary – June 2014

This document was produced by Optical Character Recognition (OCR)  by REDWatchof the released UrbanGrowth document. It is provided as easily accessable and searchable access to the released document. It is possible OCR errors may have occured and while we have checked the resulting document we can not guarantee that it is without. If you propose to quote or use this document please check it against the original document which is available from REDWatch or the Public Information Officer at UrbanGrowth NSW.The original Sydney Morning Herald article about this can be seen at
Sydney renewal project at Eveleigh likely to be scaled back