Meriton’s fine dwarfed by its development spending
A hotel group fined $3 million last week for masking TripAdvisor reviews has lodged development applications for Western Sydney totalling several hundred million dollars.
Meriton Group, owned by billionaire Harry Triguboff, is moving ahead with plans for major apartment developments in Parramatta and Macquarie Park.
It was handed a $3 million penalty by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last Tuesday for preventing TripAdvisor reviews which might have portrayed its holiday apartments in a bad light – a figure which pales in comparison to the latest development spending.
Meriton has been a major investor in Parramatta since 1973 and continues to push large-scale developments across the area.
It is proposing a Woods Bagot-designed dual-tower project on a corner site on George and Charles Streets in the western Sydney capital which will add to its existing inventory on the 180 George Street site it has been developing since 2005.
The $229 million proposal will include the construction of two skyscrapers comprising 767 residential units, 216 serviced apartments, shops, a childcare centre and a commercial gym.
The group has also submitted a development application for a 27-storey tower at Talavera Road, Macquarie Park.
The application marks the first stage of a controversial four-tower plan for the site, which includes a lifting of the former 45-storey height limit to 60 storeys – a proposal approved by the City of Ryde last year.
The estimated cost of work for the first tower is more than $67.5 million, with Meriton looking to develop the remaining three towers on the $200 million site as part of the project’s second stage.
The developer recently completed the dual-tower ‘Altitude’ building on Church Street Parramatta, which includes 254 serviced apartments.
AccomNews is not affiliated with any government agency, body or political party. We are an independently owned, family-operated magazine.
