Aware Super, Altis Property Partners pay $121m for Crown Group’s Waterloo site

The superannuation fund and its real estate partner have nabbed the Mastery by Crown Group site in Sydney’s Waterloo as a once great property empire is carved up.

Superannuation giant Aware Super and real estate partner Altis Property Partners have paid $121m for the Mastery by Crown Group site in Sydney’s Waterloo as the remnants of the once great empire of the development giant are carved off following a bitter dispute between its two Indonesian-born founders.

Crown Group co-founder Iwan Sunito said $180m worth of apartments and retail had sold prior to the fracas with his former business partner Paul Sathio, while separately a Chinese-Australian buyer had pledged to pay $45m for one single apartment tower in the project.

Mr Sunito said he was unsure if the buyer would keep the purchases in play or rescind the contracts, which represented about 50 per cent of the project’s value. Aware confirmed the purchase on Friday but is yet to reveal its plan, although is unlikely to pursue a luxury apartment project.

Colliers’ agents Matthew Meynell, James Cowan and Trent Gallagher had been marketing the development site after its lender Bank of China pulled the plug in July.

The inner-city site had been stagnant for at least a month despite Crown having pre-sold many of the apartments off the plan several years ago.

Previously billed by Crown Group as one of Sydney’s finest residential development opportunities with five master planned buildings accompanied by retail, the plans were prepared by Koichi Takada Architects and Silvester Fuller, for the 44-48 O’Dea Ave and 52D O’Dea Ave, Waterloo holding with consent for 368 apartments, as well as ground floor retail components.

The 16,921sq m site has already had significant early works commenced, with the site having been partially excavated.

Mr Sunito had at one stage looked to acquire the site as part of the break-up of the Crown Group.

Crown Group co-founder Iwan Sunito. Picture: John Feder

Other buyers had looked to terminate the sales contracts of the various off the plan apartment buyers but the superannuation giant is now in control of the site.

Aware set up a joint venture arrangement with Altis last year and the Aware Real Estate operation now has a $2bn portfolio of industrial, office and residential assets, and is growing its operations further as it has about $3bn of developments.

It has forged into build-to-rent developments – including essential worker affordable housing – in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Canberra, as well as industrial sites in western Sydney.

The Waterloo site could become one of the latest projects to be switched to build-to-rent as other sectors of property slump.

In September last year, Aware Super and Altis bought a major site in St Leonards on Sydney’s North Shore for about $80m and are planning to build two new towers for essential workers.

In 2021, Aware Super kicked off its first purpose-built essential worker affordable housing development in Melbourne, after acquiring a prominent Queens Rd site. The fund, supported by investment partner Altis, bought the vacant Bayview on the Park site, for $73m and it is developing it as a residential project.

Meanwhile, Mr Sunito said he was continuing with his development application for his Macquarie Park and Chatswood projects in Sydney.