Rare vacant commercial block of land in inner-city Annandale for lease

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Is it a storage site? Is it a parking lot? What about a community garden, or maybe an Hawaiian-themed market selling raw fish poke bowls?

It could be host to almost anything – a rare 400-square-metre block of vacant land for lease between houses in the middle of the inner-west Sydney suburb of Annandale.

The empty site, zoned industrial, was bought along with the neighbouring five-bedroom house by an investor who has leased out the home to tenants and now wants to find a use for the spare block in the hope that it might be rezoned in the future.

“This kind of site just doesn’t normally come up,” said Ray White Commercial NSW leasing agent Alicia Parlby, of the site at 18-20 Water Street, for rent at $600 a week plus GST. “People buy land and then build immediately.

“But later on, if the zoning is uplifted to residential, the owner might build a house there or a block of apartments. In the meantime, I suggested that we try and get a tenant for him. We feel it would make a good community garden, storage or parking and the owner would be open to creative ideas from tenants as long as they are a good fit with the neighbourhood as there’s a real sense of community on this street.”

The driveway leading to the 400-square-metre block. Photo: Supplied

The site, close to Parramatta Road and just four kilometres from the city, is reached via a driveway between houses, and is secure and gated off. A tenant could also erect a semi-permanent structure, like a shipping container, to work as a storage shed, workshop or office.

The planning controls changed after the houses were built, Ms Parlby said, zoning it industrial, but could well change back again in the future. The previous owner used it himself for storage and for parking.

There have already been a number of inquiries from stonemasons and builders who’d use it as a place for parking and storing their materials, and also from a company making Hawaiian poke bowls, wanting to hold a regular market there.

“But the neighbours are all lovely and we thought that could create too much noise and traffic, so we turned them down,” Ms Parlby said. “If someone wanted to do welding there, or anything terribly noisy too, that wouldn’t work.

“But for the right tenant, it’s a great little spot, and as it’s a commercial lease, the owner would be happy to make it for three to five years or work with them to suit their needs.”