The first project to be fast-tracked through the NSW Government’s Planning System Acceleration Program has welcomed its first residents.
Midtown MacPark, a $2.2 billion Community Apartment Project (CAP), is a venture between Frasers Property Australia, state and federal governments and Mission Australia Housing.
A designated State Significant Development, Midtown MacPark, which is in Macquarie Park, 13km northwest of Sydney's CBD, includes:
- the 24-level Bates Smart-designed MAC Residences building;
- the 20-level Soul Residences;
- two 14-level apartment buildings comprising 259 community housing apartments, and
- one 20-level apartment building with 130 affordable apartments.
Other apartment buildings at Midtown MacPark include the architecturally iconic Treehouse building, on track for completion in 2026.
MAC Residences has 269 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments and two penthouses and welcomed its first residents this month, while the Candalepas Associates-designed Soul Residences comprises 107 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments.
In redeveloping the former social housing Ivanhoe Estate, the project will increase community housing dwellings on the site from 259 to a minimum of 950 among an eventual 3,300 residences at Midtown MacPark.
Community housing apartments at Midtown MacPark are owned by the NSW Land and Housing Corporation and managed by Mission Australia Housing, which will have full time staff members based on site to link residents with services and support.
Rod Fehring, chair of Frasers Property, has said in the past that the development will be a community whose intergenerational residents will take care of one another, rather than the model of a traditional retirement village where one operator cares for a limited age bracket.
“In my experience with RV and aged care – I am not a fan of the RV sector. I am not a fan because I believe fundamentally that retirement living is about property – it’s not about property, it’s about care,” he said at the DCM LEADERS SUMMIT 2019.
