First look: Sun Property Group bucks Chatswood high-rise boom with low-rise apartment plans

Sun Property Group is taking a different approach to the apartment boom sweeping Chatswood, lodging plans for a relatively low-rise residential development in a suburb where much of the recent development conversation has centred around how high developers can go.

The developer has filed a State Significant Development Application for a two-building residential project across 1A-29 Bowen Street and 12-18 Moriarty Road, on the southern edge of Chatswood near the Pacific Highway and Mowbray Road.

Rather than joining the growing collection of 30, 40 and even 60-storey towers proposed across Chatswood, Sun Property Group is seeking just seven storeys across the 6,188 sqm amalgamated site.

PTW Architects has designed the project, which would deliver 110 apartments across two buildings arranged around a substantial central landscaped courtyard. The plans comprise 104 market apartments and six affordable apartments, with the latter to be dedicated as affordable housing in perpetuity.

The apartment mix is also heavily weighted toward larger residences. Of the 110 apartments, 77 would have three bedrooms, 31 would have two bedrooms, with just one one-bedroom apartment and one four-bedroom residence.

It's a notably different product proposition to much of the higher-density stock being planned closer to Chatswood's commercial core, and one seemingly aimed squarely at owner-occupiers and local downsizers.

Apartment sizes reinforce that strategy. A number of the larger three-bedroom residences span around 150 sqm internally, while the four-bedroom apartment at the top of Building A measures more than 200 sqm before its substantial outdoor space is added.

The two buildings will sit parallel to Bowen Street, separated by a central landscaped communal area and connected by a pedestrian route between Bowen Street and Moriarty Road. PTW says breaking the development into two volumes was intended to reduce the perceived mass of the project while creating a central courtyard as its social and visual heart.

SPG, founded by Wayne Sun in 2010, has been active in both Sydney and Melbourne in recent years.

Last year it completed Aurora Willoughby, 12 apartments on Willoughby Road. A year earlier, they completed The Brookville in Toorak. They're soon to launch The William, 18 apartments on Williams Road, also in Toorak. They also have an upcoming project in Hawthorn.