By Megan Gorrey
It’s the inner Sydney development saga that’s had more stop-starts than the cars that inch past it on Victoria Road each day. Fifteen years after developers snapped up the Balmain Leagues Club, yet another development pitch promises to overhaul the decrepit site with hundreds of apartments.
Chinese developer Heworth Holdings Group is seeking approval for revised plans to replace the old club’s crumbling, graffitied buildings with a $285 million mixed-use development that includes 227 apartments – including 59 affordable housing units – in three towers between 14 and 16 storeys.
Heworth Holdings Group has increased the height of the proposed development from 12 storeys to 16 storeys.
Heworth won approval for a smaller development, but raced back to the drawing board this year to leverage the Minns government’s new affordable housing bonus to add extra height and density.
“It’s complete idiocy,” Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne said.
Byrne opposed the 30 per cent jump in density and said Labor’s bonuses were designed to encourage investment in new housing projects – not slow down developments that already had approval.
“This site has approval right now for a 12-storey redevelopment. If they want to start pretending opposition to [this plan] is NIMBY-ism, that’s outrageous. We’re just saying, get on with the job.”
The plan is the most recent iteration of a long and tortured bid to redevelop the Rozelle site, which has been dogged by financial woes, dumped proposals, state government about-turns, and legal stoushes.
The site has been empty since 2010, but plans to overhaul it go back to 2004. The cash-strapped Balmain Tigers commissioned a masterplan to redevelop the complex, which was originally built in 1957, to include a new clubhouse and possibly shops, a plaza and low-rise residential buildings.
Three years later, amid debate about revenue from poker machines, the club warned it would be forced to sell its premises if it did not win planning approval for its proposed $110 million “super club” which included two unit blocks of eight and 12-storeys, 40 shops, and a 500-space car park.
The club won council approval to redevelop the 28,000 square metre site in 2008.
The Balmain Leagues Club was originally built in 1957. The site has been abandoned since 2010. Credit: Brendan Esposito
The next year, developer Rozelle Village, a joint venture between former Wests Tigers player Benny Elias and Ian Wright, bought the club’s headquarters for $1 in return for taking over its debts of $23.5 million. The deal guaranteed a space for the club to lease in the future development.
The joint venture vowed to push ahead with the club’s proposal, however; it hit a roadblock when planning authorities killed off the scheme in response to fierce local opposition – largely due to concerns about traffic congestion, its size, and the impact on shops – in 2010.
Rozelle Village was undeterred. It put forward an even more ambitious proposal for blocks of 16 and 18 storeys with about 145 units, a clubhouse and supermarket.
That plan failed. By 2012, changes to planning rules for the site meant the beaten proposal was back, and it had ballooned to a $300 million mega-project with 304 apartments in towers up to 32 storeys.
The site has been subject to multiple proposals – many of which have been rejected due to their size and traffic concerns.
Residents denounced it as “gross overdevelopment”. In 2014, a redrawn proposal for 247 units in two towers of 20 and 24 stories was also knocked back due to “unresolvable” traffic concerns.
In 2018, the idea of transforming the site at all was plunged into uncertainty when the state government flagged plans to use it as a dirt dump for the $6.7 billion Western Harbour Tunnel.
Two years later, the site’s new owners, Heworth, won approval for a 12-storey plan to rebuild the club alongside 167 apartments, a town square and supermarket, originally valued at $400 million.
The government’s decision to abandon those plans in 2022 prompted Heworth to seek compensation from the state for millions of dollars because of the prolonged acquisition of the property. But it also gave fresh hope of progress at the site.
For years, huge signs proclaimed the Rozelle Village redevelopment was “coming soon”. It was not, in fact, coming soon. Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
That was until last year, when Premier Chris Minns unveiled height and density bonuses for large private developments containing at least 15 per cent “affordable housing” – that is, homes typically offered at 20-25 per cent below the market rate for 15 years, and often managed by non-profits.
In February, Heworth told the council it would apply for the bonus rather than begin demolition.
Byrne said at the time the added delays were “frustrating” and called for work to raze the structures to begin immediately, noting a fire tore through the site in 2022, and it posed a risk to public safety.
Heworth said in August it had appointed a company to start demolition, with the multistorey car park to start coming down in September, in tandem with assessment of the proposal.
“If approved, Rozelle Village will be one of the first state-significant developments to deliver on the NSW government’s affordable housing policy,” the company said in a statement.
The proposal, on exhibition until October 3, said: “A ‘do nothing’ approach would fail to deliver affordable housing and new housing supply that is in significant demand within the inner west.”
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