Commercial & General's 88 O'Connell named SA's top project

Commercial & General’s Eighty Eight O’Connell was named the top project at this year’s nbn-sponsored UDIA SA Awards for Excellence, held at Adelaide Oval earlier this month, InDaily reported. The North Adelaide apartment precinct, built on a site that had sat vacant for 36 years, also picked up two further category wins on the night.

Why it matters

Eighty Eight O’Connell rose on the former Le Cornu site on O’Connell Street, a well-known gap in one of Adelaide’s best-known retail strips that had stood empty for 36 years before Commercial & General’s redevelopment. Judges singled out the project’s architectural quality, resident amenity and contribution to revitalising North Adelaide, and praised the shift from a longstanding gap on the strip into a connected precinct that brought renewed activity to the wider retail strip, InDaily reported. Judges also described the finished development as an exemplar for apartment living in South Australia.

The project took three awards on the night: Project of the Year, Apartments (High-Rise) and Urban Renewal, a sweep that puts Commercial & General’s build and delivery approach, rather than just the site’s location, in front of the rest of the state’s industry. For developers assessing other long-stalled CBD-fringe sites in Adelaide, the judging panel’s praise for how the precinct knitted retail, residential and public space together gives a concrete, state-recognised benchmark to measure a competing scheme against.

The numbers

Eighty Eight O’Connell comprises 158 residences, from one-bedroom apartments to premium penthouses, across three architecturally distinct towers of up to 15 storeys. A publicly accessible Sky Park connects the towers, and the precinct also carries mixed-use space for retail, hospitality, health, wellness and commercial tenants, alongside precinct-wide electrified heating, air-conditioning and ventilation. The residential and commercial components were delivered at the same time, so the precinct operated as a community hub from opening rather than filling up in stages, InDaily reported.

What’s next

InDaily’s report covers only the awards result, with no further construction or leasing stage set out for the now-complete precinct. With both its residential and commercial components already open, Eighty Eight O’Connell stands as a finished precinct rather than a project still working through delivery. Other CBD development activity in the city is tracked on our Adelaide crane count coverage.