Work has started to demolish the former Stuart Flats public housing block, marking the first step in Morris Property Group's planned $300 million transformation of the inner-south site.
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It comes as another developer's plans to redevelop the final parcel of the Griffith precinct with 70 high-end apartments are unveiled.
Morris Property Group's consultant, GHD Demolition, has started stripping out the former public housing units, with larger-scale demolition work to get underway in the next three weeks.
Development manager Geordie Edwards said the site would be cleared in about five months.
In April, the developer revealed its plans to build 414 units, a childcare centre and medical facility at the site, which it bought a month earlier for $55.6 million at an ACT government auction.
The number of units is the maximum permitted under the lease for the three Stuart Flats blocks it bought at the March sale.
The developer will hold community meetings to discuss the proposal in late July, before lodging a development application with the ACT Planning and Land Authority.
The fourth Stuart Flats block, a 3695 square metre block at the corner of Evans Crescent and Light Street, sold to Bisa Property for $8.25 million at the auction.
Bisa Property has now started preliminary public consultation on plans for the block, which would include 70 two and three-bedroom apartments.
The group's general manager of development, Robert Hitchcock, said the complex would be pitched at people looking to downsize.
"We are pitching for that higher-end residential [market]," Mr Hitchcock said .
He said demolition work at their block would start in July, with a development application for the project to be submitted later in the year.
The March auction also resulted in the sale of Narrabundah's Gowrie Flats, where developer Amalgamated Property Group is now planning a 177-home estate.
Neither the Stuart Flats or Gowrie Flats developments will include any public housing. When it announced plans to sell off the blocks in 2014, the government suggested that 10 per cent of the future developments could be set aside for that purpose.
It walked away from that proposal last year, arguing Canberra's inner city was already well stocked with public housing.