First look: Urban Property Group continues Penrith apartment stronghold with new tower plans

Urban Property Group is continuing to pad out one of the larger residential development pipelines in NSW, with its latest plans taking the developer-builder back to familiar territory in Penrith.

The group has spent much of 2026 progressing major projects across the state, lodging State Significant Development Applications for projects including a 371-apartment tower at Castle Hill and the next stages of its Chapter Place precinct at Edmondson Park, while construction has also commenced on the first stage of Keira Place in Wollongong.

Its attention has now returned to Penrith, a market where Urban has been developing for more than a decade and where it is currently building Mayfair, the final stage of its broader Sheffield Quarter precinct on the northern side of Penrith Station.

This time Urban is heading to the other side of the railway line.

The developer has filed plans for a significantly taller project at 614-632 High Street, around 600 metres from Penrith Station and opposite some of the city's major civic and retail infrastructure, including Westfield Penrith, Penrith City Library and the Q Theatre. Appendix R - Design Report

The State Significant Development Application proposes a 48-storey mixed-use tower on the 4,715 sqm site, which has an approximately 85-metre frontage to High Street and a secondary frontage to Union Lane.

DKO Architecture has designed the project, which would deliver 453 apartments across a six-storey podium and residential tower, incorporating a mix of conventional apartments, affordable housing and serviced apartments.

Of the 453 residences, 341 would be residential apartments, comprising 97 one-bedroom, 234 two-bedroom and 10 three-bedroom apartments. A further 112 serviced apartments would comprise 73 studios, 35 one-bedroom and four two-bedroom apartments. Fifteen per cent of the residential floor space is earmarked for affordable housing, with those homes intended to be managed by a registered community housing provider for at least 15 years.

The tower would rise from a substantial podium containing the serviced apartments, car parking and retail, with three retail tenancies totalling around 760 sqm shown at ground level.

A major part of the proposal is the amount of resident amenity spread vertically through the building rather than concentrated at ground level.

Level six would become the main communal level, with around 1,715 sqm of outdoor space alongside a swimming pool, gym, co-working areas, lounges and private dining facilities. Further sky terraces are proposed around levels 16 and 42, taking the total communal open space across the development to around 2,194 sqm.

The design report says the elevated communal areas have been positioned to take advantage of views toward the Blue Mountains and the broader Penrith landscape, while the tower itself has been pushed toward the western side of the site as part of the response to future development around the western end of the CBD.

At street level, Urban and DKO are proposing to open the site considerably more than its current condition. The plans include a publicly accessible landscaped plaza and north-south through-site connection, retail spilling into outdoor areas and land set aside for a potential future road connection between High Street and Union Road. Appendix R - Design Report

The architectural treatment is deliberately different from the heavily glazed towers increasingly common across Sydney. DKO has instead proposed a warmer palette of brick, rendered concrete, bronze-toned elements and precast finishes, with the podium intended to respond to the finer-grain character of High Street before the considerably more slender tower rises above.

At 48 storeys, the project would also mark a considerable step up in scale from much of Urban's previous work in Penrith and add another major tower to the changing western end of the city centre.

It also gives Urban another sizeable project in a suburb where it already has a substantial track record. While Mayfair completes the developer's work around Sheffield Quarter on one side of Penrith Station, High Street would establish its next major foothold around 600 metres away, this time within the traditional Penrith CBD.

Urban now lists more than 10,500 homes in its future pipeline across NSW, with projects spanning Penrith, Castle Hill, Parramatta, Edmondson Park, Gosford, Wollongong, Newcastle, Bella Vista and several other Sydney markets.