17-storey Newcastle CBD tower site lists for sale via EOI

A consolidated site fronting Auckland, King and Hunter streets in Newcastle’s central business district, New South Wales, went to market via an expressions of interest campaign on 28 October 2026, carrying concept plans for a 17-storey mixed-use tower. Knight Frank agents Brent Sinclair and Blake Phelps are marketing the landholding on behalf of a Sydney-based investor and developer syndicate, which is selling the site rather than building on it, so no private developer is yet attached to the project.

Four separate titles make up the holding, together totalling 3,397 sqm, and the block fronts three streets at once, Hunter, Auckland and King, sitting right across from the University of Newcastle’s NUspace campus. The concept plans drawn up for the site envisage 248 apartments over the 17 storeys (a proposed 60.8 metres tall), with ground-floor retail and commercial space and a component of affordable housing built in.

Why it matters

The campaign is a sale of land carrying a concept, not a development application lodged with City of Newcastle council, and not a developer committed to build. Knight Frank is marketing the opportunity for the vendor syndicate to find a buyer who would then need to progress its own design and lodge its own DA before any of the 248 apartments becomes a real approval. That distinction matters for anyone reading the concept numbers as a project on track: height, unit count and the affordable housing component are all drawn from marketing material prepared for the sale, not from a council-assessed scheme.

Mr Sinclair, quoted in the Newcastle Herald, said large consolidated CBD development sites were “exceptionally rare, particularly those with three street frontages”, pointing also to its position opposite a major educational institution. The claim that sits behind that statement, the three-frontage consolidation itself, is confirmed by the site description rather than by any independent land registry check, so it stands as the agent’s characterisation of the asset being sold.

The marketing material frames the opportunity around the concept tower’s development potential rather than around the land alone, consistent with Mr Sinclair’s description of the site’s scale and three street frontages as drivers of buyer interest. The listing adds to a run of Hunter-region news this month, including Newcastle Airport’s debt load climbing to $340m.

The numbers

The site totals 3,397 sqm across four titles, with frontages to Hunter, Auckland and King streets. Concept plans propose a 17-storey tower reaching 60.8 metres, housing 248 apartments plus ground-floor retail, commercial space and affordable housing. The expressions of interest campaign is being run by Knight Frank’s Brent Sinclair and Blake Phelps, marketing on behalf of the Sydney-based investor and developer syndicate that owns the consolidated landholding.

What’s next

Because the listing is a land sale rather than a lodged application, the next formal step belongs to whichever buyer emerges from the expressions of interest process, not to City of Newcastle council. Knight Frank’s campaign has not published a closing date for the EOI period in the material reviewed, so the timeline to a sale, let alone to a development application, is not yet set.

Until a buyer is secured and that buyer lodges its own DA, the 17-storey, 248-apartment concept remains exactly that: a concept attached to a property listing, built to demonstrate the site’s potential rather than to bind any builder to deliver it. The next party to watch is whichever developer, if any, emerges from the EOI process and takes the concept to an actual development application with City of Newcastle council.