The Waldorf Astoria Sydney is one of two towers planned for the flagship project One Circular Quay, situated at the Sydney Harbour foreshore in the New South Wales capital. The second is a 59-level luxury residential tower, due 2027, with both projects expected to have a total value of around AUD$3 billion on completion. Lendlease and Mitsubishi Estate Asia acquired the development project in 2022 for AUD$800 million upfront from AW Holdings, with an additional AUD$50 million payment subject to project outcomes. As the project progresses, Lendlease is expected to gradually reduce its interest in the scheme. Construction has already commenced on the 28-floor, 220-key luxury hotel, which is expected to open late 2026, joining six other Waldorf Astoria properties in the Asia Pacific region.
Tattarang co-owner, Nicola Forrest, said at time of acquisition: “As long-term investors, we believe this development can play an important role in the future rejuvenation of the wider Circular Quay precinct and we are committed to engaging with Lendlease and the surrounding community towards an even brighter future for Australia’s gateway city.”
As part of the transaction, Fiveight will also own and develop the retail offering at ground level which will feature 11 individual retail tenancies, including units in the adjacent luxury residential tower.
The Tattarang story
Tattarang, the private investment group of Nicola and Andrew Forrest, has proved an ambitious vehicle with diverse tastes. In the last six months, the group has bought out an iconic Australian hatmaker Akubra as well as a home-grown boots manufacturer, R.M. Williams for its consumer division. With other business units in health tech, energy and agri-food, it appears a disparate firm united by the interests and concerns of the Forrest family.
The firm was previously known as Minderoo Group until May 2020, when the group took the name of a stallion owned by Forrest’s mother at the family’s Minderoo Station during the 1950s. This personal touch has often characterised the group’s strategy, which invests across a wide variety of sectors and asset classes while maintaining a “proudly Australian” ethos. It also supports Nicola Forrest’s philanthropic Minderoo Foundation. Nicola and Andrew split after 31 years of marriage in July 2023, but undertook to maintain shared management of their business interests.
Property goals
Within real estate, Tattarang’s property arm Fiveight, founded in Perth in 2020, focuses on hospitality and residential, while executing commercial and mixed-use schemes when opportunities arise. Fiveight recently merged with the firm’s former lifestyle arm Z1Z, seeing the exit of hospitality executive Joost Heymeijer after just a year at Tattarang. After signing a slate of new projects in 2022 and 2023, Fiveight’s inaugural CEO, Paige Walker, was appointed. Walker has added considerable living sector experience to the team following a 16-year spell at Australian property group Mirvac.
Fiveight has made waves on the Australian property scene in four short years, hitting the headlines in 2021 for purchasing Olivia Newton-John’s Byron Bay resort, Gaia Retreat & Spa. The 22-key luxury acquisition helped Tattarang diversify a property portfolio hitherto more concentrated on the West Coast.
Subsequent deals in 2022 and 2023 have driven the business towards something of a critical mass in hospitality and living. In spring 2022 the firm announced the purchase of a major residential and tourism development site in the Harvey growth corridor in Western Australia. Fiveight said it was “committed to reactivating plans to transform the 260-hectare coastal site in Binningup”. Featuring 2.2 km of beach frontage, the site includes a former 9-hole golf course and has been earmarked for residential, retail and leisure uses. In the same year, in Perth, Fiveight acquired mixed-use project Carillon City situated in a key downtown retail destination.
Elsewhere, the firm is planning a landmark hotel in Fremantle in Western Australia on the site of the former 1970’s Spicers Building, creating a boutique hotel on a plot currently used as a carpark, adding solar panels for the building’s energy needs. Fiveight is also working on delivering an “environmentally sensitive tourism offering” at the former Nigaloo Lighthouse Project, which has direct access to the Ningaloo Marine Park and Cape Range National Park.
ESG approach
Given this appetite for development, often in areas of natural beauty, Andrew Forrest, who is also CEO of iron ore giant Fortescue Metals Group, has become one of the country’s leading proponents of renewables and strident sustainability targets. He demanded fossil fuel bosses’ “heads on spikes” when attending the UN’s Cop28 climate conference last year. “If the Cop doesn’t lead to a phase-out of fossil fuels, it’s basically a flop,” he said at the time. Discussing industry and political leaders’ reluctance to adhere to more stringent climate goals, he has said: “The resource we’re lacking isn’t technology, it isn’t capital – it’s character of our industry and political leaders.” Forrest’s argument encompasses not only the future of Australia, but also small island states across Asia Pacific – including the citizens of emerging economies – whom he perceives to be at risk of “lethal humidity”.
Forrest has acknowledged the irony of Fortescue being one of the country’s major polluters, calling himself a climate “culprit” but committing AUD$6 billion of the iron ore miner’s money to clean up its act. Fortescue, in the meantime, has been wrangling with a transition to the production of green hydrogen over the past two years, which it has recently had to scale back amid discussions about the fuel’s future.
Tattarang must also consider its own impact as the business pursues the development of extensive beachfront land and balances profits against biodiversity. Last month, Perth council rejected Fiveight’s plans for a beachside hotel with bars and a rooftop pool overlooking the Indian Ocean at its Indiana Tea House site in Cottesloe. The local mayor said at the time that “commercialisation and privatisation of beaches” was not part of the Australian ethos.
By Isobel Lee
