Considered by many as Sydney's most revolutionary, design driven development, Republic I and II set a totally new benchmark in inner city residential and continues to stand the test of time. The architectural design and advertising campaign were extraordinary and elevated this East Sydney site from emerging to unprecedented desirability.

This 5 stage development within the Honeysuckle Project, one of Australia's largest urban renewal projects, transformed derelict contaminated land and buildings to a vibrant new place to live, work and visit. The project comprised 250 harbour front residential apartments, an 80 room serviced apartment/hotel and commercial buildings providing 20,000m² of net lettable area. A successful marketing and sales campaign promoted the new cosmopolitan lifestyle Lee Wharf had to offer, resulting in a significant premium in sales prices compared to its competitors.

Ingeniously branded as ‘between the bay and the beach', SouthPoint apartments displayed simple, spacious and refined architecture, intelligent floorplans and good quality finishes. The forceful marketing campaign repositioned Hillsdale as a desirable location and along with cleverly designed apartments and a successfully rebranded shopping centre, achieved prices that were well above what the area had ever previously achieved.

Comprising of 31 luxury harbour front residences, the challenge of the project was its close proximity to a revitalised Luna Park. The success of the project relied on promoting a residential product with interior finishes that surpassed competitors, whilst delivering this product within the budget allowance. A marketing campaign that focussed on interior design and the flexibility to work with the interior designer achieved a sell-out of all apartments prior to completion.

The transformation of the "old" Hilton Hotel to its current iconic status was managed from Hilton's brief…."with a clean sheet of paper how do you transform the hotel to provide a gateway to Asia and conferencing and a guest experience second to none in Australia". The design competition, planning outcome and design development to tender was the responsibility of John and his team, and the result speaks for itself.

All contract documentation and contract negotiations for this $60m refurbishment were creatively managed, delivering a project that not only provided design excellence but was delivered both within budget and within the client's very tight "shut-down-open for business" commercial drivers.

The owner of the hotel required the property to be refurbished to the value of $40m, whilst maintaining hotel operations. The project brief was to define the scope of works required to meet Mariott's requirements and work within the client's approved budget limit, and to stage and deliver the works in order to minimize impact on existing operations whilst meeting the tight commencement date required under the Management Agreement with Marriott. The works were completed on time, on budget and to the satisfaction of Marriott.

This project involved the refurbishment and repositioning of an existing 14,000 NLA neighbourhood shopping centre. Responsibilities included project delivery and the leasing negotiations securing new anchor tenants and fully leasing the specialty shops. The centre was separately titled from a Residential Stratum above and on completion of the works was sold to a private investor on a bullish yield based on the quality of the lease covenants.

The proposed delivery strategy and methodology to integrate the tenant's fit-out requirements with the base building works and achieve the tenant's tight timelines for handover was a key component that helped secure the ASX tenancy pre-commit. Contract documents were creatively crafted to de-risk the landlord's exposure and integrate the tenant's requirements in the Agreement For Lease. This $100m "fast-track" project was completed on time and under budget.