Balmain lodges 462 apartments for Doncaster rail loop site

Balmain Group has lodged plans this week for a 462-apartment scheme on Doncaster Road, in the City of Manningham, on a site that sits inside the long-proposed Suburban Rail Loop corridor north of Box Hill, The Urban Developer reported on Thursday.

The application covers four adjoining properties, 584 Doncaster Road, a former car dealership, plus 3 Briar Court and 811 and 813 Elgar Road, where single-storey homes have been demolished. The combined 8,176 sqm site sits in the Doncaster Hill Major Activity Centre, about 17km east of the Melbourne CBD. The design, by Nonda Katsalidis of FK Australia, pairs two towers of 19 and 17 storeys with a four-storey building on Briar Court stepping down toward the surrounding low-rise homes. FK Australia was formerly Fender Katsalidis Architects, the practice Katsalidis formed with Karl Fender.

Why it matters

Balmain Group is a Sydney-based private credit company, so this is a lender applying for a project of this scale in its own name rather than financing one. The lodgement went through the state’s Development Facilitation Program pathway, which lets proponents apply directly to the Department of Transport and Planning instead of through Manningham council, a route reserved for housing proposals the state wants assessed faster. The site was previously approved for 260 homes, so the new application is about 78 per cent larger than the existing approval on the same land.

The numbers

The apartment mix is 145 one-bedroom, 273 two-bedroom and 44 three-bedroom homes. Parking is spread across four basement levels, with 474 car spaces and 181 bicycle spaces. Ground-level uses include retail, a 275 sqm restaurant and 350 sqm of co-working space. The four addresses were consolidated by Balmain Group after the car dealership and the three homes on Briar Court and Elgar Road were demolished.

What’s next

The application now sits with the Department of Transport and Planning for assessment under the Development Facilitation Program, which does not require a Manningham council decision. Until the department rules on it, the 462-home figure is a lodgement, not an approval. The site sits inside the proposed Suburban Rail Loop corridor, but the rail project and the apartment proposal are separate processes on separate timelines. For comparison at the other end of the scale, Pitard Group’s 24-apartment Fairview development in Hawthorn is already under construction.