One of the few remaining examples of Canberra's "reserved-character" office blocks is under rapid demolition on Limestone Avenue, with prominent developer Doma Group keen to make a start on two apartment blocks and an array of upscale townhouses on the four-hectare site.
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The Doma Group bought the former CSIRO headquarters for $20 million in 2016 but redevelopment was stalled for two years while a debate went on as to whether the site should be maintained for its heritage value and 1970s architecture.
In the meantime, the decommissioned buildings were vandalised and looted for their copper piping.
An environment protection and biodiversity conservation referral was lodged and approval granted in July last year. The National Capital Authority gave the go-ahead for the building to come down in September 2018.
Completion of the demolition is expected to take another two weeks.
Similar in style and character to buildings such as the National Press Club in Barton and the Benjamin Offices in Belconnen, the CSIRO was described in the heritage report as an example of a reliable, cost-efficient office building "of a reserved character".
Sydney architects McConnel, Smith & Johnson won the contract to design the CSIRO’s national corporate headquarters in the late 1960s. The National Capital Authority - then called the National Capital Development Commission - awarded the contract for construction at a cost of $1.43 million.
Two buildings were finished in 1970 and staff moved in the same year. A third, two-storey office building on the site went up in 1981.
Appropriately called "The Foothills" because of the site's elevation just below Mt Ainslie, Doma's site is a generous one, which managing director Jure Domazet said allows for two multi-storey blocks with a total of 104 apartments, with both buildings canted off-axis away from Limestone Avenue. Behind them will sit 132 townhouses.
Doma's $140 million development proposal has changed from its original concept, with additional townhouses added to take advantage of what Mr Domazet described as an emerging "unmet demand" in the inner north of the city.
"We will have five different sizes of townhouses starting from two-storey, two-bedroom townhouses - which gives people an entry level into an inner-north non-apartment product - right through to four-bedroom townhouses with a three- or four-car garaging, which could be considered an alternative to a conventional detached home," he said.
"It gives people a low-maintenance, big townhouse; they don't have to get into an old house and renovate it. It gives them a lock-up-and-leave alternative without the garden maintenance to worry about.
"It [the site] has got good views, it's walking distance to the city, and it's close to Mt Ainslie; the whole idea for us is that there's lots of apartments available in the city but there's not many townhouses in this type of location that can offer the amenities that we're offering.
"We want to maximise the green space, and hide the driveways and the car parking. It's a bit more expensive for us to do but it's worth it because the site lends itself to that type of concept.
"Because we've got the scale we can have a tennis court, we can have a pool and we can have proper communal facilities, which is unusual. We can offer all those things."
He said Doma is working through final details with the National Capital Authority, and the development should go to the property-notification stage by late April or early May. Construction of the apartment blocks is hoped to start in the third quarter of this year.
