Newcastle West has attracted another proposal for high-rise offices as the city's building "boom" evolves into what one developer described as the new normal.
Spartohori Pty Ltd, the Newcastle developer behind the council and commercial office building in Stewart Avenue, has unveiled plans for a narrow seven-storey office building on the other side of the road, on the site of the dilapidated West End Hotel.
The company plans to lodge a development application in the next two weeks for the project, which sits at the centre of a Newcastle West precinct that Housing Industry Association Hunter executive director Craig Jennion described last year as the "golden mile".
The Westend Business Tower project joins a long list of major inner-city residential and commercial redevelopments on the drawing board or under construction.
Other high-rise projects in the pipeline for Newcastle West include the Store, Dairy Farmers Corner, Huntington and Horizon apartments, Bowline offices and units, Birdwood Business Centre, Little National Hotel and Spotlight site development.
The state government also is assessing tenders for the massive Honeysuckle HQ site in Newcastle West.
At the other end of town, Iris is busy on the second stage of its EastEnd complex while City of Newcastle demolishes its nearby King Street car park, opening up the site for redevelopment.
Long-time Hunter developer Hilton Grugeon said that what many had considered a temporary boom in Newcastle had morphed into a more consistent and enduring level of investment.
"I don't think we can really call it a boom any more. It's now more just like steady progress," he said.
Mr Grugeon, whose GWH company will start work soon on demolition for its 22-storey National Park Street apartments, is now eyeing off Maitland as a new frontier for high-rise development.
"That surplus is targeted towards larger tenancies, bigger floor plates, whereas this building is targeting a more boutique style."
Newcastle firm CKDS designed the glass-fronted building with a distinctive pattern of "triangulated hoods" to mitigate against the western sun.
"It is a key site in terms of critical visibility, so we were conscious of making it a building that had some presence on a narrow site," CKDS principal architect Stuart Campbell.
Spartohori is exploring whether to lease out the ground-floor shop space as a bar.
