Container-inspired apartment block

Digital Harbour Holdings has applied for planning permission to build a new 25-storey apartment tower on Harbour Esplanade.

With a 60-metre frontage at 218 Harbour Esplanade, the proposed building will sit between the LifeLab building and the permitted-but-yet-to-be-constructed “Altus” tower on the Dudley St corner.

Digital Harbour director David Napier told Docklands News, the Jackson Clements Burrows architectural design was inspired by a vision of containers stacked on a wharf. Wharf-type timbers will also be employed on the lower podium levels to complete the metaphor.

Some 183 apartments are planned for the 82m structure and 117 car spaces are included – a very generous allocation by today’s standards. Also “very now” is a 111-space automated car stacker.

Mr Napier said future owners would drive into a loading area, collect what they wanted to take with them, walk out and touch a button to activate automatic parking.

The apartments are generously sized too. Six will have three bedrooms, 44 will have two bedrooms and a study, 74 will have two bedrooms and 55 will have a single bedroom.

Also in the mix will be four, two-storey offices and four “home offices” on the ground floor. There will not be any retail.

Most of the larger apartments will, in fact, have water views to the front and city views to the rear. This has been achieved by making them double-storey and an ingenious use of corridor layouts. Effectively, the “half-size” downstairs unit is the entrance, with the entire upstairs component straddling the width of the building.

The target market is squarely owner occupiers, with a covenant on the title of each property to protect against short-stay rentals.

The complex also features a gymnasium, pool (12.5m x 5m), function room, 60 bicycle spaces and each until will have a six square metre storage locker.

Single bedroom units will be 52sqm, two-bedders will range between 80 and 95sqm and the three-bedroom apartments will be up to 200sqm.

Mr Napier estimated the cost of apartment as being between $10,000 and $11,000 per square metre.