Haymarket property, approved for skinny hotel, is sold for $20 million
The scale of approved 'skinny tower' building at Pitt Street, Haymarket. Image: Supplied

Haymarket property, approved for skinny hotel, is sold for $20 million

Alison Cheung|Apr 17, 2019

A building in Sydney’s Haymarket with initial approval for a high-rise, skinny hotel has sold off-market for about $20 million.

Developer Ninety Four Feet sold the six-storey building at 410 Pitt Street in June, about three years after they bought the property for $8.6 million, Domain Group records show.

Currently occupied by a 74-room boarding house with a restaurant on the ground floor, the Melbourne developer was granted approval from the Land and Environment Court in 2016 for the building envelope and the use of the land as a hotel.

The shopfront of the Haymarket site is 6.4 metres. Photo: Supplied The shopfront of the Haymarket site is 6.4 metres wide. Photo: Supplied

The building at Pitt Street, Haymarket, that sold for $20 million. Photo: Supplied The building at Pitt Street, Haymarket, that sold for $20 million. Photo: Supplied

The height limitation of a future building on the 342-square-metre site is about 115 metres, or roughly 31 storeys.

And with a frontage of 6.4 metres, the tower would be among Sydney’s most slender structures – even thinner than Melbourne’s Phoenix apartment building, which is 88.5 metres, or 29 storeys, tall and 6.7 metres wide.

Future developers would need to lodge a separate application for the demolition and construction on the Haymarket site, as well as further project details including number of hotel rooms, hotel floor layout and total floor space.

The end value of the hotel project was estimated to be $150 million, according to the Ninety Four Feet website, which still listed the development as one of their projects at the time of writing.

The Phoenix apartment tower at 82 Flinders Street, Melbourne, has a width of 6.7 metres - but the Haymarket building is even skinnier. Photo: Angela Wylie The Phoenix apartment tower at 82 Flinders Street, Melbourne, has a width of 6.7 metres. Photo: Angela Wylie

While the buyers paid more than $58,000 a square metre for the land in an area known for budget hotel accommodation, it is not known whether the new owners will proceed with the approved plans.

Ninety Four Feet and Oxford Agency selling agent Steffan Ippolito declined to comment on the sale.

The original application submitted by the developer in 2015 proposed 178 indicative rooms with small formats.

A drawing showing the building envelope of the approved Haymarket hotel. Image: Supplied A drawing showing the building envelope of the approved Haymarket hotel. Image: Supplied

Tiny rooms and a greater focus on design and communal areas are growing trends among new projects.

The latest development of this type is a proposed boutique hotel in Sydney’s Chippendale, which the architects designed using “smart space planning” to minimise room sizes, while focusing on the bathroom, luggage and wardrobe space.

And above the Wynyard Walk in the Sydney CBD, Canberra-based Doma Group will build 230 compact hotel rooms embodying a “smart luxury” design concept in its Little National development.