Plans to redevelop Sydney’s former Verona cinema site in Paddington have received the green light, setting up a major mixed-use build that keeps a visible piece of the neighborhood’s built history in place.
Developer WT Malouf has approval for a seven-storey project at 17 Oxford Street and 2 Verona Street, delivering 64 homes, with 14 designated as affordable housing. The project’s end value is just under $97 million, according to the developer’s approval details.
For the masonry and restoration trade, the headline detail is clear. The redevelopment retains and restores the Verona’s two-storey brick masonry facade, continuing an approach flagged in an earlier approval for an office concept that has now been replaced by housing.
A four-screen cinema and a bar are slated to return to the site on the third basement level. WT Malouf director Jack Joseph said, “The part of the Verona that was always for everyone is back for everyone, the ticket, the bar, the Friday night film.”
The plan also includes four three-storey terrace homes at 2 Verona Street, replacing a two-storey office building. Across four basement levels, two levels provide 56 car parking spaces. Residents also get rooftop access, with a terrace and a 20m infinity pool.
The site sits about 3km from the Sydney CBD within the Paddington Urban Heritage Conservation Area, surrounded by 19th-century buildings. While the property is not heritage-listed, the heritage-listed Busby’s Bore water supply tunnel, built in 1837, runs beneath the site.
Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, the architect behind the cinema’s 1996 conversion, also designed the new redevelopment, with Richards Stanisich leading interior architecture. Construction is expected to begin later this year.
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