280-apartment Castle Hill project under construction, due 2029

Construction is under way at The One Castle Hill, a 280-apartment project across eight buildings at 16 Dawes Avenue, Castle Hill, with builder Masscon working toward a completion date of late 2029, according to apartments.com.au’s listing, which marks progress as verified as of 18 October. The Hills Shire Council’s file for the site is cited as DA 672/2023/JP/B, though a public search of the NSW Planning Portal for the project’s panel reference, PAN-671854, returns no record: “Showing: 0 results. No records available.”

The project is a joint undertaking of developer The One Collection and builder Masscon, with Place Studio as architect, on a site within the Hills Showground Station Precinct, a short walk from Hills Showground Metro Station on the Sydney Metro North West line. It is one of several mid-rise schemes proceeding in The Hills Shire alongside larger towers still in the approvals pipeline, including Level 33’s proposed 1,263-home, four-tower scheme at Kellyville, a few kilometres north along the same metro line.

Why it matters

For north-west builders, trades and agents, The One Castle Hill puts 280 apartments into the market around Hills Showground Metro Station, where the local planning framework, The Hills LEP 2019, has already absorbed successive rounds of uplift tied to the metro’s arrival.

Apartments.com.au’s listing notes that NSW Department of Planning amendments to The Hills LEP 2019 could allow up to 9,000 dwellings in the broader Hills Showground area, a precinct figure rather than one for this project. The One Castle Hill is a live, under-construction instance of the pattern: a mid-rise, metro-adjacent scheme proceeding while the wider precinct’s upzoning is still being worked through.

The gap in the public record is also worth noting on its own terms. A council development application file should be retrievable through the state’s planning portal search, and this one is not, at least not through the panel reference tested. That does not change the fact that the project is physically under construction, which apartments.com.au verifies independently of the DA file, but it means the DA 672/2023/JP/B reference cannot currently be checked against its own source document.

The numbers

The One Castle Hill comprises 280 total residences across eight buildings of up to six storeys, a mid-rise form rather than a tower, with 515 car spaces provided across the project, according to apartments.com.au’s project listing. No capital investment value, affordable housing component or non-residential floor area is stated on the listing, and none is reported here.

The listing cites six years of structural protection and a two-year builder care period after completion. Those match the Home Building Act 1989 statutory warranty periods of six years for major defects and two years for other defects.

What’s next

Masscon’s construction program is continuing toward the stated late-2029 completion. No interim milestone, such as a topping-out or a stage handover, is dated on the current listing.

The unresolved point is the public DA record. The Hills Shire Council is the consent authority named for the site, and a 672/2023/JP/B file should sit in the council’s own register even where the state portal’s exhibition search does not surface it. Until that file is located and checked, the DA number and any modification history attached to it rest on the project’s own marketing and on apartments.com.au’s reporting, not on a document this outlet has been able to read directly, and should be treated with that caveat.