People who bought into the Lachlan’s Line apartment complex in Sydney’s North were promised a “prestigious new community”. Now they’ve discovered the basement floors in all four blocks are at risk of collapse.
Greenland Group, the Australian arm of Chinese state-backed developer Greenland Holdings, was issued with urgent rectification orders earlier this week over the Lachlan’s Line complex at 23 Halifax Street in Macquarie Park.
The Macquarie Park apartment’s car parks on the basement level are at risk of collapse. Brook Mitchell
The NSW Building Commission found a structural defect meant the development’s concrete slab could not withstand the car park and ground floor loads. The 900 apartments in the complex are not at risk.
“This is a defect in a building product or building element that causes or is likely to cause the basement slab to fail, namely, to fracture and collapse, leading to the destruction of the building or any part, or the threat of collapse of the building or any part,” wrote Matt Press, the acting assistant building commissioner, in his published orders.
The commission has confirmed the defects do not pose any danger to residents. “The defects identified relate to the long-term durability of the basement levels of the building only, not to any units within the complex,” a Commission spokeswoman said.
Karen Stiles, executive director of the advocacy group Owners Corporation Network welcomed the order which follows increased scrutiny of apartment developments.
“The Owners Corporation Network is thrilled to see the fast-growing list of Building Commission NSW orders that are making developers responsible for serious defects. If this had been happening for the past 20 years we wouldn’t have had such a litany of owners evacuated and financially destroyed,” she said.
This week’s orders give Greenland two months to scan the concrete slabs and commission an engineering report. The developer has eight months to repair the defects.
The commission had shared a draft copy of the order with the developer, local council and owners corporation in late October.
In December Greenland requested the order not be issued and asked for a longer period to fix the defects.
According to the Greenland website, the Lachlan’s Line apartments are a “prestigious new community”.
The apartments feature “impressive interior design touches in every room, from quality timber floorboards to distinctive black tapware and superior stone-based kitchen benchtops,” the website reads.
Like Lachlan’s Line, the company’s other completed apartment blocks in Sydney have been billed as higher-end developments. These include the Greenland Centre in the Sydney CBD, the Omnia building at Potts Point, the Leichhardt Green and Lucent North Sydney.
But the Chinese developer has severely downsized its Australian interests in recent years, selling its giant Erskineville site in inner Sydney to Coronation Property for $315 million in 2022 due to debt issues that have hit much of the Chinese property sector.
Greenland Holdings, the holding company for Greenland Group, defaulted on a $US432 million dollar bond due to a missed amortisation payment in July last year.
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