By Jacob Saulwick
Kings Cross land owners are banding together to try and sell the city's famous stretch of nightclubs and strip clubs to property developers, according to club owner Charlie Saleh.
Mr Saleh, the long-standing owner of the Saphire Lounge, says he has spent the past two years securing agreement from land owners along Darlinghurst Road to sell en-masse to a developer.
Land owners want to sell Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross, to a major property developer.Credit: Steven Siewert
"In total there's almost 65 owners," said Mr Saleh. "They are happy to sign an option agreement with a developer. I represent all of them."
Mr Saleh said he hoped an eventual development could become a new "gateway" to Sydney, and suggested towers reaching beyond 300 metres could be erected on the site.
The old Coke sign in Kings Cross.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
"From looking at what's happening around Parramatta, around Liverpool, the whole of Sydney has been transformed," said Mr Saleh.
"This is a long strip. It's a 100 metre long strip, 25 metres wide. You've got a railway station right across the road, my suggestion to developers would be to transform the railway station, transform the shopping centre car-park.
"Sydney needs something to be a gateway to it. This is the highest part of Sydney and it hasn't been developed."
Securing development approval for the suggested towers, however, could be difficult.
The land over which Mr Saleh is hoping to organise the sale runs between Darlinghurst Road and Kellett Street, between Rosleyn Street and Bayswater Road.
The City of Sydney's current planning controls prescribe a maximum floor space ratio for the area – the height of a building compared to the ground it occupies – of three. Towers of the height envisaged by Mr Saleh would require a floor space ratio of around 20.
Another complication is that the Kings Cross supervised injecting room is located on the strip proposed for development, as is the City of Sydney's Kings Cross Neighbourhood Centre.
Mr Saleh said a re-development could return a larger and more modern facility to the City of Sydney. "I don't think they can be a major obstacle to a major development like this."
The club owner, who first started in business in the Cross with a kebab store in 1989, said the area's days as the city's nightlife hub were finished, following the imposition of the lock-out laws.
"It will never be where it was," he said. "To take people away was easy."
Mr Saleh said the cost of buying the properties would be about $200 million, and he hoped to secure a deal in the near future. The developer would then have to secure planning approval.
The proposal, reported in the Sunday Telegraph, comes as the NSW government considers its response to the Callinan Review into lock-out laws. Premier Mike Baird has said he would respond to the review in the laws, credited with driving activity from the Cross, by the end of the year.
The City of Sydney and the NSW government declined to comment on the proposal.