Woolooware Bay Masterplan

Woolooware Bay Town Centre is a large masterplanned community surrounding the existing Sharks stadium in Sutherlandshire. The masterplan has taken an under-utilised waterfront site with a poor urban identity, and created a highly successful mixed-use precinct. The design of the development, it’s marketing, and its final built outcome have changed what was once considered the edges of Woolooware, and will make it the new centre and focus of the wider community.

At street level, the masterplan creates a highly permeable network of streets and parkland that reconnects the surrounding community back to the waterfront. The buildings are carefully placed to maximise the bayside and district views, allowing the built outcome to provide a strong sense of place that is particular to this verdant green context.

To the west of the stadium, the first three completed stages contain a series of buildings ranging from 8 to 15 storeys with approximately 640 apartments. Streets are activated with a mix of cafe, retail, commercial suites. Residents share generous communal facilities across the three stages, including an indoor lap pool and spa, podium lagoon style family pool with BBQ areas, a rooftop infinity edge adult only pool and adjacent reception area, gym, community workshop, and rooftop cinema. Collectively these facilities allow for resort style living.

To the east of the stadium, the fourth stage will contain a significant new mixed-use development with approximately 23,000sqm of retail, a large waterfront dining precinct, hotel, childcare, medical centre, 255 apartments, and a major refurbishment of the existing club facilities.

The architecture is a modern interpretation of the surrounding natural features, which provides a strong theming that is highly contextual. This design aesthetic is extended into the lobbies, the common areas, and apartment interiors to ensure a consistency in the overall design approach. A warm palette of quality materials are used, including sandstone, precast, timber, and profiled metal cladding. Environmental considerations include passive ventilation strategies, biofiltration of stormwater, embedded energy network, solar panels, and careful regeneration of the adjacent foreshore riparian zone and coastal ecology.