Goodman Plans 2,150 Sydney Homes Across the Street From Its $1B Data Centre

Goodman Group has won a state recommendation to fast-track five apartment towers of up to 60 storeys at 3-5 Talavera Road in Sydney's Macquarie Park, directly across from its recently approved A$1.4 billion Project Apollo data centre. The 2,150-dwelling proposal now awaits a ministerial decision on

Goodman Group, the industrial developer behind a A$1.4 billion (US$1 billion) data centre approved in September for Sydney’s Macquarie Park, has won a state recommendation to fast-track five apartment towers of up to 60 storeys on the other side of the same street. The plan for 2,150 dwellings at 3-5 Talavera Road received a recommendation on 14 October that the project be declared a State Significant Development under New South Wales planning rules, according to a record of the authority’s briefing. The plan calls for five buildings of 45 to 60 storeys.

The site for the planned residential towers faces 4-10 Talavera Road, where Goodman’s 135-megawatt Project Apollo data centre won state approval on 2 September. The tower plan surfaces five weeks after Goodman abandoned its Project Mars data centre in nearby Lane Cove West after local residents raised concerns about potential noise impacts and fire risks posed by the facility’s back-up fuel and battery storage. In response to questions about the data centre’s potential impact on the residential project, Goodman said it “provides essential digital infrastructure in metropolitan areas – optimising land use in strategic infill locations, by delivering a diverse portfolio of developments”.

The planning minister must now decide whether to declare the residential project State Significant, after which Goodman would lodge a full application for merit assessment by the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure. Goodman has not disclosed a development cost for the towers. Goodman already owns the tower site, which currently holds an office building known as The Park at 5 Talavera Road and the Park View Business Park warehouse and office facility at number 3. The proposed residential development sits on the opposite side of Lane Cove Road to the planned data centre, and the two projects would eventually be separated by a 1.2 hectare public park.

The development consent for Goodman’s Project Apollo data centre sets operational noise limits at four locations, including apartments and townhouses at 1-15 Fontenoy Road, residences at 35 Waterloo Road and a hotel at 7-11 Talavera Road, but none on Goodman’s tower site. A noise assessment prepared for Goodman by SLR Consulting stated that the areas newly zoned for mixed-use development under Macquarie Park’s rezoning were about 600 metres or more from the approved data centre. Operational noise was one of two key issues in the department’s assessment of Project Apollo, which required quieter cooling equipment. Goodman chose open-circuit evaporative cooling towers over air-based systems, accepting water use of up to 1.5 million kilolitres a year.

Infrastructure NSW chief executive Tom Gellibrand said the site’s current zoning allows mixed-use development, according to the transcript of the NSW Housing Delivery Authority (HDA) briefing. The HDA is a panel of senior state officials that screens large housing proposals for a faster state approval track. The City of Ryde objected to Project Apollo over tree loss, visual bulk and public domain impacts, and asked for a cumulative risk assessment given the cluster of planned data centres in the area. Goodman’s noise study counted four other approved or proposed data centres within 300 to 1,200 metres of the site, including one at 269 Lane Cove Road.

The council has not yet seen detailed plans for the residential towers, with Ryde mayor Trenton Brown warning that state-led processes let major planning decisions occur “without proper strategic oversight”. Goodman has cashed in on Talavera Road housing before. Meriton bought a Talavera Road site from Goodman in 2016 for a reported A$200 million and is developing a four-building project there with towers of up to 60 storeys. The company’s development book is now dominated by digital infrastructure, with data centres accounting for 73 per cent of its A$14.5 billion of work in progress at the end of March.