Adelaide’s $120m Parkline Tower Opens as CBD Surges

As projects such as Chasecrown’s $120-million Parkline development overlooking Adelaide’s cosmopolitan East End free-up housing for families on the urban fringe, a family business is liberating a site for renewal in the city’s colourful West End.

Recently completed at 9 Dequetteville Terrace at Kent Town, a stone’s throw from the East End’s Rundle Street cafe and restaurant strip, Parkline is about to welcome its new residents.

Chasecrown director and project architect Louis Kanellos said that, with Parkline, he aimed to create light-filled apartments that felt expansive.

The project’s completion is part of a surge of new CBD and city-fringe apartment developments in various stages of construction and planning. Private‑sector apartment approvals in central Adelaide nearly doubled last year, jumping 96 per cent to 4646—the highest since 1983.

Kanellos said Parkline buyers were mostly owner-occupiers downsizing to secure low maintenance living, which helping to bring established family homes elsewhere in Adelaide onto the market.

Built by Multiplex, the 12-level, 61-apartment building is 90 per cent sold.

Parkline has 1200sq m of commercial space and a multi-use space for residents that caters for meetings and larger gatherings.

The building is capable of net zero operation, thanks to a seven-star average apartment energy rating and a power system that can avoid the use of fossil fuels for heating, cooling, hot water and cooking.

The carpark has electric vehicle charging stations and is naturally ventilated with green walls that reduce energy consumption.

At Parkline last week, South Australia’s planning minister Nick Champion said the project was a “benchmark for stunning design in a priceless location”.

“We need more homes to be built for all South Australians and we celebrate all developments opening up that add housing supply to the market,” he said.

“As people move into apartment living, it frees up family homes in the suburbs, meaning less pressure on the housing and rental markets.”

On the other side of both the coin and of Adelaide’s CBD, one family is taking advantage of relaxed development heights—announced by Champion in October last year—to liquidate a 1325sq m site.

The Marcellina clan that owns 11 pizzerias across metropolitan Adelaide has placed 296 and 298 Hindley Street on the market.

Sitting across and down the street from one of the family’s pizzerias, the dual-frontage block is in the West End of Adelaide that is rapidly transitioning from a 24-hour party precinct to an education and innovation corridor.

▲ The 1325 sq m site on Hindley Street that Adelaide’s Marcellina family has listed for sale.

Following the November building height changes, the Hindley Street site now has a 60-metre height allowance, which Anton Williams of selling agent Cushman & Wakefield said would allow a mid-rise tower of 15 to 18 levels.

Williams said the sale was “a genuine inflection point” for Adelaide’s West End.

“You’ve got a large, clean site with dual activation to Hindley and Rose Streets, holding income in place and, importantly, newly expanded height controls that materially improve feasibility,” he said.

The property is leased to car park operator Park Yeah Pty Ltd, returning $163,000 a year plus GST.

Jack Dascombe of Cushman & Wakefield said large parcels of land in the West End were rare.

“The planning reforms have acted as a catalyst for increased site efficiency and consequently precinct activation, providing developers greater confidence around end value,” he said.

“For decades, Hindley Street has been synonymous with hospitality and entertainment.

“Now, as Adelaide University consolidates and defence, technology and biomedical investment continue to expand across the city, this precinct is becoming part of the high-density urban spine which links the riverbank, health precinct and innovation district”.

Expressions of interest in the Marcellinas’ Hindley Street site close on March 18, with price expectations around $7500 per square metre.