Iris Capital is executing plans for a massive $77 million redevelopment of The Palms at Chullora, adding residential buildings and commercial space.
Plans were lodged with Canterbury-Bankstown Council for the mixed-use project on The Palms’ 11,744sqm site on the Hume Highway, slated for construction in three stages.
The existing Palms is a two-storey suburban pub, offering sports bar, gaming lounge and function room.
It will be temporarily relocated, before taking up its new permanent home in a new three-storey structure, beneath a 56-room hotel.
Further to that will come a five-storey mixed-use building comprising 37 residential apartments, above 1,459sqm of commercial space at ground level, fronting the Hume Highway “to enhance activation”. There will be a new slip lane off the main road for greater access.
The final component will be another three-storey building, housing 55 one- and two-bedroom apartments, with extensive basement parking for over 300 cars.
The plans have now been approved, after being backed by the NSW Planning Department, which went so far as to amend Canterbury-Bankstown’s Local Environment Plan to allow an increase to the maximum height and FSR of the buildings.
Sam Arnaout’s Iris bought the site for $22.5 million in 2014 from Coles’ pub group, Spirit Hotels, which had held it since 1986.
Iris – laying claim to being the OG of pub-developers – has a plethora of projects in the works.
Mid-2023 the group lodged similarly ambitious $70 million plans to redevelop the Kingswood Hotel in Penrith, and there is lot in mind for the future of the Strathfield Hotel, bought in 2022.
And high on the agenda currently is initiating the announced $100 million remake of Lasseters Casino in Alice Springs.
For these and other reasons the timeframe for construction at Chullora is as yet undetermined, and Iris COO Paul Devine declined to comment on when construction might begin.
