First look at high-rise plans to add 10,000 homes to eastern suburbs

The eastern suburbs skyline would be dramatically transformed with high-rise towers as tall as 34 storeys under NSW government plans to add 9400 new homes.

Draft plans revealed on Tuesday show varied building heights of 34 storeys around Edgecliff station and 32 storeys around a to-be-built Woollahra station as part of a state government plan to ramp up housing supply east of Sydney’s CBD.

The draft plans also include seven new parks, nine kilometres of new walking and cycling connections and a new Woollahra local centre which the government has promised will create more jobs and provide local services.

The new homes would be built over the next 20 years over 168 hectares of eastern suburbs land, with 40 per cent of new homes to be delivered within 200 metres of a train station, with the new Woollahra heavy rail station to open in 2029. The aim of the rezoning proposal is to enable private developers to build taller and more dense projects, and there won’t be any compulsory acquisition of land.

The draft plans also include a requirement for a diversity of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments in the new developments.

Premier Chris Minns said on Tuesday it wasn’t fair to ask the western suburbs to carry the burden of increasing Sydney’s housing stock, but conceded the rezoning was unlikely to combat the affordable housing crisis. The proposal includes a 3 per cent affordable housing contribution in perpetuity, or 15 per cent in selected buildings.

“There is affordable housing as a part of this plan, but I’m not going to lie to you – this is not a proposal to solve Sydney’s affordable housing problems, and if this was the only thing we were doing, we’d deserve to be knocked for it, but it’s not,” Minns said.

Minns said Sydney needed a mix of housing at different price ranges to encourage downsizers to open up bigger homes in the suburbs for families and first home buyers.

When asked why the 3 per cent affordable housing target was so low, Minns said he had been distressed by the number of projects that hadn’t gone ahead because developers were turned off by a local government affordable housing target.

The plans will likely trigger local backlash as residential Woollahra streets with mostly two-storey homes and low-density unit blocks are rezoned to accommodate towers as tall as 34 storeys.

The Liberal-dominated Woollahra Council is fighting against the dramatic uplift, instead offering an alternative housing plan to deliver 3600 new units around the station.

Mayor Sarah Dixson last month said the government’s plan was a “dystopian nightmare in waiting”, and a council report said the Labor state government had not provided enough evidence to justify opening the station.

While Dixson remains staunchly opposed to the 10,000 home target, her deputy and fellow Liberal councillor Sean Carmichael has spoken out against his own council’s offering.

In a lengthy post to X quoting the television show Chernobyl, Carmichael backflipped on his initial criticism of the state government’s plans as a “random and peculiar act of toxic masculinity” and instead argued the council’s alternative plan was not a serious option.

“Up to 3600 units is not remotely the best we can do,” he said.

“That number is not merely an inadequate answer to the state; it is an insult to every Sydneysider facing mortgage or rental stress – and to every younger Sydneysider who hopes one day to have a space of their own.”

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