The 20,000-square-metre precinct will feature six buildings (four of them residential) set around a central green square. Photo:

Canberra’s London Circuit to get $650m mixed-use precinct

Michael Bleby|9 hours ago

Capital Property Group, the business founded by the late Rich Lister Terry Snow, is set to make its mark on Canberra once again with a $650 million hotel, office and residential precinct on London Circuit, expanding the CBD south-west towards Lake Burley Griffin.

The private developer and landlord is taking on its third-largest project after Canberra Airport and adjacent commercial facilities and the Denman Prospect residential subdivision at the 20,000-square metre site it purchased from the ACT government for $66 million.

The 20,000-square-metre precinct will feature six buildings (four of them residential) set around a central green square.

Canberra – in common with other capital cities, designed to impress a sense of grandeur – was built with streets too wide and buildings spaced too far apart for the human scale needed for liveability and walkable connections. The city is in the middle of a decades-long project to overcome its problem of scale.

The site between City Hill and QT Hotel Canberra was an off-ramp connecting London Circuit to Commonwealth Avenue; it was removed to raise the level of London Circuit. The project is to be a “bridge” connecting the city with land slated for future development on the shore of the lake, Capital Property’s head of property Richard Snow said.

“It’s the biggest site ever released in the CBD by the ACT government,” Mr Snow told The Australian Financial Review. “The opportunity is to do something quite different from what Canberra’s used to.”

The precinct will comprise six new buildings around a park. There will be four residential buildings and a high-end hotel and office tower.

Ground floor retail will include cafes, restaurants and a convenience supermarket. The residential buildings will house 502 apartments, of which 76, or 15 per cent, will be affordable rental homes.

The site will act as a bridge extending the current city centre southwest towards Lake Burley Griffin, Capital Property’s Richard Snow says.

Canberra, like other capital cities, does not have enough housing to meet a growing population, which jumped 14 per cent to 453,890 between the 2016 and 2021 censuses.

Listings platform Domain – majority owned by Nine Entertainment, publisher of the Financial Review – is predicting growth in house prices of up to 5 per cent this year in Canberra. In October, data provider CoreLogic said the city’s median house price had jumped 77.9 per cent over the previous 10 years to $966,684.

Three architecture firms – Bates Smart, EM BE CE and JPW – were engaged to design the precinct, which will house an estimated 1000 residents and 1200 workers.

Construction is expected to commence, subject to approval, in 2026, with completion, in stages, expected between 2028 and 2034.

A render of the view of the precinct from the corner of London Circuit and Commonwealth Avenue.

The operationally carbon-neutral precinct will connect central Canberra better with the lakeside suburb of Acton, chief minister Andrew Barr said.

“Consistent with long-term planning commitments, Canberra’s city centre is expanding southwards towards Lake Burley Griffin,” Mr Barr said.

“This development takes advantage of nearby infrastructure including two new light rail stops and will deliver much better connections from the city to the Acton Waterfront.”

Mr Barr said the key site was sold after a two-stage tender process run by agency JLL that closed its final round in December. The draft design will be submitted to the National Capital Authority for approval and will be subject to public consultation.