The two-step: a rezoning more than doubled this Oxford Street site and delisted four heritage terraces, then the state stacked a tower on top

The NSW Planning Portal records the first move on this block as a pair of numbers. On 18 September 2019 a planning proposal for 194-214 Oxford Street and 2 Nelson Street, Bondi Junction, was gazetted. It more than doubled how much building the site could hold and it deleted a heritage listing.

That was step one. Step two came from the state. Neither step, on its own, is unusual or unlawful. Read together, on the same title, they are a method: a way to manufacture development potential that no single decision would have granted, and, at the second step, to carry it through over the objections of the community and the state heritage body.

01Two numbers on a portal page

Waverley Council covers Sydney's eastern beaches, Bondi Junction its dense retail spine. The NSW Planning Portal's decision page for the Oxford Street and Nelson Street site sets out the first step in plain figures. A planning proposal, PP-2020-315, was gazetted on 18 September 2019. It lifted the site's floor space ratio from 1.5:1 to 3.5:1 and raised the height limit from 15 metres to 36 metres. In the same instrument, local heritage listing was removed from Item I212, a group of four terraces.

A word on the jargon, because it is where the value is created. Floor space ratio is simply how much building floor you may put on a block relative to the block's area. At 1.5:1 you may build one and a half times the site area in floor space. At 3.5:1 you may build three and a half times. That is the multiplier that a valuer prices. This is a land reclassification in effect: the same dirt, given a much larger permitted envelope.

The heritage delisting is the quieter half. A local heritage listing is a control that constrains what can be demolished or altered. Removing Item I212 lifted that constraint from four terraces. Once the listing is gone, the terraces are, in planning terms, ordinary developable frontage. The enlarged envelope now has clear ground beneath it.

02The state adds height

The second step did not come from Waverley Council. It came from the state. The 2025 approval was a State Significant Development, a class of larger project that is assessed and determined by the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure rather than by the local council. The NSW Planning Portal's major-projects page records the pathway.

The extra scale was enabled by the Housing SEPP. A State Environmental Planning Policy is a state planning instrument that can sit over the local rules. The Housing SEPP's infill affordable-housing bonus can grant additional height or floor space in return for a component of affordable housing. Here it supplied the uplift on top of the already enlarged envelope. To be precise about the framing: this was a state SSD approval, enabled by the Housing SEPP bonus, over council and heritage objections. It was not a case of one instrument overriding a council rejection. The determining hand was the state's from the start of that pathway.

Say the height plainly. Up to 17 storeys, in a two-tower composition running from 14 to 17 storeys, on a spine where the local limit set in 2019 was 36 metres. The state approval reached above what the rezoning alone contemplated.

03Not a first draft: the consent it replaced

The 2025 approval did not land on a bare site. The NSW Planning Portal's major-projects page records that the block already carried a consent for an 11-storey, 70-apartment building. The 2025 approval upscaled that consent.

This is the two-step visible in a single line. From 70 apartments to 85, from 11 storeys to as many as 17. Each figure is the product of a lawful decision. But the sequence matters: the rezoning built the platform, and the state approval built higher on it. Neither step, examined alone, looks like a transformation. Stacked, they are one.

Each step is lawful. Together they remake a streetscape.

04The objections that did not carry

The public record is not ambiguous about how the second step was received. The Urban Developer reports that of 125 submissions on the development, 118 objected. The Heritage Council of NSW, the state's own heritage advisory body, also objected.

The approval was granted notwithstanding those objections. This is not an allegation against any officer, councillor or the lawful applicant, and there is no misconduct finding here. It is a description of an outcome that the documents record: a state approval delivered over the weight of community submissions and over the state heritage body's own objection. The people who lodged the 118 and the Heritage Council are, in the ledger of this decision, on the paying side. They lose the four terraces and the amenity. The yield created by the two steps accrues to the applicant that builds it.

We name the developer only as the lawful applicant, because that is all the record supports. The mechanism, not the applicant, is the story.

05The Democratic Bypass, one block at a time

This is the pattern THE PATCH will keep returning to, the one we file under The Democratic Bypass: an outcome that no single accountable vote produced, assembled instead from a chain of separate, lawful steps, each of which absorbs only part of the change. A rezoning here. A state instrument there. A bonus on top. At no point is there one decision a resident could point to and say, that is where the streetscape was traded.

The two-step is one route through that bypass. There are others in the planning toolkit, and it is worth naming them so the method is legible. A voluntary planning agreement lets an applicant offer a public benefit in exchange for planning changes. A deemed refusal, where a council fails to decide inside the statutory clock, can open a path to the Land and Environment Court. The Sydney Eastern City Planning Panel determines certain regional applications in place of the council. Each is a lawful lever. None of those levers is what happened on this block: here the route was rezoning, then a State Significant Development approval carrying the Housing SEPP bonus. The point is that the levers exist, and that value can be moved along any of them without a single decision ever bearing the full weight of the result.

Currency note: the rezoning figures are as at the gazettal of 18 September 2019; the height, apartment and value figures are as at the 2025 State Significant Development approval recorded on the NSW Planning Portal and reported by The Urban Developer. Figures may move with later modifications.

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