Opal Tower residents remain in temporary accommodation

Hundreds of residents are still in temporary accommodation as nearly half of Opal Tower’s apartments remain unfit.

Shady Eskander is an Opal Tower resident and the tower’s body corporate chairman. Picture: Nick Cubbin

Five months ago, Shady Eskander’s short-term plans involved watching the New Year’s Eve fireworks from his new apartment on the top floor of Opal Tower in Sydney’s Olympic Park. Longer term, he and wife Amy hoped to start a family.

But plans were up-ended on Christmas Eve when major cracks found on the 10th floor of the $165 million skyscraper forced an emergency evacuation. Along with hundreds of residents, he’s been in limbo since.

“Many of us planned for kids this year,” the 28-year-old businessman said. “We thought this would be a great place to raise our families. But now, can I have a newborn in this building? It’s difficult at this stage to have an ­answer to that.”

Hundreds of residents remain in temporary accommodation as nearly half of Opal Tower’s 392 luxury apartments are still not fit for reoccupation. An expert report commissioned by the NSW government found a number of design and construction issues, including “noncompliance with national codes and standards”, had caused major damage on a number of levels, but it stopped short of assigning blame to the developer, Ecove, or builder Icon.

Remediation works have begun and are expected to take at least 10 weeks. Mr Eskander, the tower’s body corporate chairman, is back living in his apartment, but he said even the creaks and groans of routine settling had been giving beleaguered residents the jitters.

“People at night asleep hear a bit of cracking — it’s not structural concrete cracking — but because of the event they get anxiety,” he said. “Some people would say, ‘No way I’d spend a night in that building’. But some of us don’t have a choice; you can’t just get a refund.”

Last year’s benchmark Shergold-Weir report outlined “significant and concerning” problems with the residential construction industry across Australia and made 24 recommendations to lift standards. In February, the NSW government announced a regulatory overhaul of the state’s construction sector, but Minister for Better Regulation and Innovation Kevin Anderson has yet to commit to a timeline and the government appears to be moving slowly on implementing some reforms.

“We want homeowners to have confidence in the building and construction industry, which is why we will make sure we get these reforms right,” Mr Anderson told The Australian.

“The report recommended a window of three years to implement the recommendations and NSW is on track to deliver within the time frame.

“The NSW government is taking these reforms very seriously. We are in consultation with stakeholders in the building and construction industry to ensure these reforms deliver outcomes they set out to.”

Mr Anderson said the NSW government had committed to appointing a Building Commissoner to assist the implementations.