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Eastern suburbs developer Arash Tavakoli has for the past four years been hatching plans for one of his Landmark Group’s most prominent projects yet: demolition of 106 low-rent apartments in Edgecliff to make way for a 25-storey tower overlooking Trumper Park.
There have been more than a few hurdles along the way, not least of which were the half a dozen owners who didn’t want to sell, Woollahra Council’s rejection of the proposal, strong community opposition, and its location in Paddington’s Heritage Conservation Area.
Despite that, the state planning minister Paul Scully has delivered good news for Tavakoli, giving the go-ahead for about 250 new homes on the site.
It’s a win not only for Tavakoli, but also for former premier-turned-lobbyist Morris Iemma, given his work in recent years shepherding the development through the state’s planning approval processes.
Tavakoli is one of a growing number of developers to turn up on the books of Iemma’s registered lobby firm Iemma Patterson Premier Advisory since Labor won the state election in 2023.
For Tavakoli, his association with Iemma not only brought the planning minister’s full attention to his Edgecliff development, but coincided with Tavakoli’s negotiations with the planning department over an enforced undertaking over unauthorised works he carried out on the waterfront site adjoining his Rose Bay home.
Neither Tavakoli nor Iemma responded to requests for comment, but a tranche of documents obtained by the Herald via freedom of information requests and through parliament offer an inside look at the wizardry and influence of one of Sydney’s best-placed lobbyist in navigating the state’s planning approval process.
The Cameron Court complex behind Edgecliff train station has long been a tempting acquisition for developers given it sits on a sprawling 7200 square metres in one of the most expensive locales in the country.
The 106 apartments, all separately owned, made the 1970-built complex an expensive acquisition process.
Tavakoli, brother of high-profile plastic surgeon Dr Kourosh Tavakoli, who calls himself the “king of boobs”, had started doing just that by early 2022, buying up the majority of studio and one-bedroom apartments. Rents average for between $500 and $700 a week.
Despite snapping up the requisite 75 per cent of apartments to force a collective sale of the block, half a dozen owners held out, forcing Landmark to resort to legal proceedings to secure a new strata renewal plan.
The last hold-out owners agreed to sell to Landmark’s acquisition company in 2024, by which time the developer was already in discussions with Woollahra Council to have it rezoned and included in its draft Edgecliff Commercial Centre Planning and Urban Design Strategy aimed at boosting building heights and floor space, among other things.
Landmark was not successful, and council raised further objections over the project’s excessive bulk and scale, traffic issues and the fact it was within the Paddington Heritage Conservation Area.
“The community has objected at every stage of this development,” said Edgecliff Residents Organisation manager Charlene Batson.
Among those against the development is the Henroth Group, headed by prominent developer John Roth, because of the building’s height increase of 279 per cent on local current limits and removal of 152 trees. Other locals have raised concerns about traffic, overshadowing and the loss of so many homes in an area where cheap rents are challenging to find.
Tavakoli’s patience with council looked to be wearing out by September 2023, when he turned to the Iemma Patterson Premier Advisory for assistance.
Emails between Iemma and the planning minister’s deputy chief of staff Gino Mandarino seeking guidance over “the most appropriate pathway for assessment” make special mention of “how council delays, indecisiveness and obstruction is preventing serious analysis or proposals to provide urgently needed housing”.
Iemma’s email describes Cameron Court as “highly dilapidated and at the end of its building lifecycle, being over 60 years old now and in need of redevelopment”.
In the ensuing months, there was a flurry of emails exchanged between Iemma’s office and the planning minister’s office. Among the issues was not only the “abrasive and ignorant” council, but also a condition by the Sydney Eastern City Planning Panel of an external independent design process for the site.
It wasn’t a welcome condition. Iemma described it as “overreach on part of the panel” and instead requested an urgent meeting with the premier and planning minister’s office to discuss the issue.
It is unknown if any such meeting took place.
But a few months later, Minns was on hand beside Tavakoli to officially open Landmark’s Victoria and George development at Kogarah, with Iemma in tow.
Landmark’s break came in late 2024, when the state government announced the creation of the Housing Delivery Authority (HDA) as a fast-tracked approval process for land rezoning and major housing developments that bypassed council. Within a week or so, Landmark had withdrawn the proposal from council.
Among the first proposals in line before the newly formed HDA was Landmark’s Edgecliff tower, and in February last year, the authority recommended it for state significant development status.
Having secured the imprimatur of the HDA, there are now questions over whether the development will deliver an increase in housing after Landmark reworked the proposal into a two-stage project in which the site would be subdivided to allow for a 10-storey building of 65 luxury apartments on one block and an as yet unspecified development to make up stage two.
A spokesperson for the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure said the minister’s approval would require no net loss in the number of dwellings across the site once it was full developed.
Woollahra councillor Mark Silcocks dismissed stage two as just an empty promise.
“There is no definitive plan, no lodged application, no approved plans and no consent,” he said. “There is no legal obligation on the proponent to build stage two, no time frame for doing so, and no mechanism to enforce compliance with the no net loss requirement if stage two is never built.”
Of the 45 submissions to Landmark’s most recent two-stage proposal, only four were supporting it, and three of those were from out of the area.
Woollahra councillor Harriet Price questioned why the project was eligible as a state significant development given its $63 million cost fell short of the HDA’s $75 million threshold.
Critics have also noted that the initial HDA recommendation for state significance incorrectly referred to the Edgecliff site adjoining Trumper Park as “an isolated piece of industrial land”. It was later corrected.
Tavakoli’s issues with Woollahra Council go beyond his Edgecliff proposal and include a dispute over his usage of the public land next to his waterfront home in Rose Bay that resulted in a damning Land and Environment Court judgment against him.
The waterfront residence was purchased for $30 million after a protracted settlement in 2018 in the name of Tavakoli’s wife, Samira Jeihooni, sister of US singer-songwriter Sara Jeihooni, who starred in the 2020 season of reality TV show Shahs of Sunset.
It was later demolished and rebuilt, to a design by Burley Katon Halliday at a cost of $5.85 million, into a four-level residence with a signature skylight dome above its central staircase.
In completing the look, Tavakoli took to the adjoining block, an unused roadway, and organised to have the parcel landscaped and three retaining walls built around it. The unauthorised work included a sandstone wall that allowed the land to be levelled in line with his harbour front wall. A low picket fence on the boundary was movable.
The Land and Environment judgment details how Tavakoli told council officers he was doing them a favour: “I need to improve my frontage verge. This area was overgrown and neglected. Why is council complaining, I have done a favour to you.”
Justice Nicola Pain was unimpressed. “This is a case where a picture paints a thousand words,” she said in her judgment. “The additional area of fill placed on the land was grassed and presents as a continuous extension of the frontage of the residence.”
Despite pleading not guilty to what were originally 10 offences, a week later Tavakoli took the matter to the state’s planning department and commenced negotiations over an enforced undertaking in which Tavakoli admitted organising to have his company occupy and carry out the work without consent.
It was a fortuitous move. “Mr Tavakoli obtained a substantial benefit as a result of entering into the [enforced undertaking], which was that five criminal charges against him personally were discontinued on the basis of the agreement reached,” Pain said in her judgment.
Tavakoli’s costs totalled more than $1.54 million, including remediation works of $491,000 and $375,000 in ongoing maintenance costs.
Tavakoli, who was recently celebrating his upcoming 50th birthday with family and friends on the French Riviera, was approached for comment.
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