Brand new Bay — Local Paddo

In the 34 years David McDowell has been working in Double Bay’s Cosmopolitan Centre, he can recall three distinct periods of trade. The cheery butcher, who is an identity around the Bay and has a clientele other retailers can only envy, describes the eras as decades of good, bad and better.

“When I first came in, there were a lot of Hungarians here — I used to sell a lot of veal, veal schnitzel, veal cutlets, liver,” says McDowell with his trademark grin.

“Double Bay had a very European feel then; there were delis and cafes, the cinema, [legendary restaurant] George’s, it was a little village, but a very classy village. People would come down to Double Bay with expectations. I arrived in 1986 and that was the first 10 years. The Cosmo Centre had just been revamped and it was great.

“The second 10 years, Double Bay went into a decline where you had places like Jeans West and Max Brenner coming in. Westfield came along, the cinema shut. The Double Bay era was gone. Paddington was gone. Bondi Junction became flavour of the month. We weren’t the flavour of the month anymore. We got through it because we have a very good clientele but it wasn’t my best 10 years.

“Then things changed again. MasterChef came along. People became interested in food, celebrity chefs, Donna Hay. People started coming back here, restaurants started opening. We now have Matteo, we have Bibo, the Cosmo has been sold and the new owners have done more for it in 12 months than the previous owner did in 30 years. So, yes, I think the future for Double Bay is very bright.”

It is universally acknowledged by anyone with a working familiarity with Double Bay that it is one of the most geographically and economically blessed suburbs in Australia. Bordered on one side by a twinkling harbour that laps twin beaches, and on the other by stately Cooper Park, and offering a rare — for Sydney — flat shopping village interlaced with grand streets that do not have to withstand the surging of through traffic, you would think it would be the most sought-after living and shopping precinct in the state.

But for years, Double Bay has struggled to emerge from a gloom that beset the village from the late-90s, resulting in vacant shops, plunging rental returns and lower real estate prices, and a sense that what was once the glitziest suburb in Sydney would never really regain its glory days.

Although there have been recent wins — including the launch of Kiaora Place on New South Head Road — during the past few years, heavy construction work and missed opportunities for progress have tarnished the area’s appeal.

“Double Bay is a most incredible place,” says Eduard Litver, whose Capit.el Group bought the Cosmopolitan Centre — long regarded as the beating heart of Double Bay — in 2018.

“It’s seven minutes from the city, 20 minutes from the airport, it has the harbour on the doorstep, it has an amazing history.

“But for a long time, there has been a lack of logic in a lot of the planning controls here. There has been no planning review here for 30 years. If you came here wearing a dress from 30 years ago, you would be out of date. There is a lack of incentive for developers to come in and do anything with vision. There is an incredible opportunity here, but there needs to be a long-term, holistic approach with the council, to making this area into a world-class village again.”

A walk down once-fashionable Knox Street reveals the battle scars of a suburb locked for many years in limbo. Uninspiring buildings sit either disused, or languishing with unpopular or garish tenancies, while the streetscape needs a facelift and even the street lights look like they come from the Soviet era.

“They have been debating what to do with the lights for five years,” says Litver with a shrug. “There was a six-week study tour around the world to look at lights, but nothing ever came of it.”

Litver recently added two properties on Knox Street, across from the Cosmopolitan Centre, to his property portfolio and has ambitions to overhaul this key part of the Bay, envisaging the once-famous thoroughfare becoming a pedestrian boulevard. He would also like to transform the buildings on the north side into an architectural talking point.

“We need new architecture here [on Knox Street],” he says. “We have plans for a beautiful building. It would cost us 30% to 40% more than the normal building to build because it’s going to be iconic, but would we be allowed to build it? It needs to happen. But I don’t know.”

For Litver — who redeveloped Bondi’s dilapidated Swiss Ground Hotel into the beautiful The Pacific building — Double Bay’s opportunity is urgent, with businesses needing transformation in the post-COVID reconstruction period.

“We can have one of the world’s great villages here,” he says. “This place is as good as anywhere — it could be Beverley Hills, or [a borough of] New York, or Switzerland, Italy, or even Queenstown. It can happen.”

Indeed, the restoration of Double Bay’s old centre, on the harbourside of New South Head Road, is already in part happening. The Cosmopolitan Centre has this month undergone a glamorous refurbishment and new tenancies including Trenery and Bassike have moved in, with plans for more major retailers to join the procession in (see our story, following page).

“We have a grand vision for this place to make a big statement here,” says Litver. “The opportunity is here and it needs to happen sooner rather than later.”

Opposite the Cosmopolitan Centre on Bay Street, Charles Mellick’s Fortis Group is in the final stages of the redevelopment of a large new commercial space that will occupy the corner of Guilfoyle Avenue. Pallas House will be a 2500sqm commercial property, fully leased to investment group Pallas Capital (which also owns Fortis).

In December, Fortis will announce the names of three major restaurants that will move into 900sqm of ground-floor space.

Like Litver, Mellick grew up in the area and has fond memories of the neighbourhood during its boom days of the 1970s and 80s, when it was Sydney’s ‘it’ spot, frequented by society figures such as Kerry Packer.

“I have seen Double Bay transition, particularly over the past couple of years,” says Mellick, who owns several other buildings in the suburb and this month spent about $20 million buying Gaden House on Cooper Street.

“There’s a lot happening. I have a saying, ‘Let’s make Double Bay great again!’ And I’m getting 30,000 hats printed with that on it.”

Mellick says the key to Double Bay’s potential lies in its centrality and its geography.

“You have Bellevue Hill, Vaucluse, Point Piper and Darling Point. Then you have Double Bay, and the only other flat spot is Rose Bay — and it has traffic.”

He says while the area is on the up, it still needs more outdoor life including alfresco dining.

“We’re trying to get Guilfoyle Park as an eating area, we’re talking to the mayor about that, so it can be a bit like Indigo cafe in Transvaal Avenue,” he says.

For her part, Woollahra Mayor Susan Wynne is supportive of modernising the Bay.

“Double Bay is our biggest commercial centre in Woollahra,” she says. “And residents who move into the area need to recognise that they are moving into a commercial area.

“We especially want to encourage Double Bay to have a healthy night-time economy. The more activity you have, the safer it is and the better it is, and we want more people down there.”

Wynne says the biggest change in Double Bay in recent years is that the big developers are now locals (by contrast, the Cosmopolitan was previously in Singaporean ownership).

“A lot of the people who are developing there are passionate about the area and they want to bring it back to life,” she says. “They are finding ways to invest into the community, and that creates jobs. We want this to be a destination where people come and spend money.”

For many of those agitating for change in Double Bay, the key to the area’s success will be in the projects the council approves.

Property observer Robert Kantor of real estate tome Boutique Developer, says the area has enough high-end developments, such as recently finished The Hunter — a complex of five — and 1788 — a $100 million boutique property development of 29 luxury apartments — that are mostly suitable for downsizers.

“The best way to rejuvenate an area is to get young families back in,” he says. “It happened with North Bondi and it can happen with Double Bay. It’s really simply a matter of appealing to that demographic with good tenancies and making it easy for them to be there.”

Kantor says the success of the Kiaora Centre, a joint venture between Woollahra Council and Woolworths, shows young people want to be in the area. It’s now just a matter of getting them to cross New South Head Road into the old Double Bay township.

Litver agrees: “Our slogan is, we’re the heart of the village. We want to bring people back into Double Bay, to get them to cross the road. We have a grand vision for the area and we want to make it a reality.”