Rosebery redux - Eastlakes next?

By David Servi

Growing enthusiasm for the reinvigorated suburb of Rosebery has splashed across the Sydney media lately, and for good reason. Long ignored by inner-city residents who, if they thought about it at all, vaguely knew it as that place where people went to get their driving licences, in the last few years Rosebery has come into its own.

The once sleepy suburb located south of Zetland and east of Alexandria is only six kilometres south of Sydney’s CBD, as well as being close to the airport, and to golf courses, and not far from the beaches of Coogee and Maroubra.

Rosebery has always had a healthy number of broad, tree-lined streets and little parks, but in the past the quiet suburb has been regarded as semi-industrial and not particularly appealing.

Foodie heaven

But recently a number of jazzy cafes, artisan bakeries, and exclusive butchers have set up in Rosebery, and more and more young urban professionals are choosing to buy California bungalows or apartments in the once working-class suburb.

Messina Gelato has its headquarters in Rosebery, with a shop for buying cones and tubs of spectacular ice-cream. Da Mario, a relative of the once much-loved and now gone Pizza Mario in Surry Hills, has found a home in Rosebery. Blackstar Pastry, home of the famed watermelon cake, has an outlet in Rosebery. Meanwhile, the adjacent 100-year-old Rosella Soup factory has morphed into the Cannery: an airy centre filled with gourmet food outlets, as well as restaurants, a distiller and even a gym.

On the steps of Green Square

Close to Sydney’s new hub of Green Square, with a library and aquatic centre, cycle-ways and a public plaza planned for the precinct, Rosebery will soon be a hop and a skip away from a wide array of publicly-funded infrastructure.

Those in the market for buying will wander around Rosebery, enjoy a cup of delicious coffee, or perhaps a raspberry and blood orange gelato, and wish they’d thought of buying in the neglected suburb five years ago. The trick to buying in gentrifying suburbs, of course, is to get in when the area is just on the cusp of change.

Neighbouring Eastlakes on the verge of transformation?

Across the busy thoroughfare of Gardeners Road from Rosebery, Eastlakes is surrounded by two large golf courses, the Eastlakes Golf Club and the Lakes Golf Club, giving the suburb an enclosed feeling.

The local mall, BKK, has been bought by the Crown Group and renamed the Eastlakes Shopping Centre, and in the fullness of time (maybe 2019) the main building will be torn down, and another structure built, with a shopping centre underneath and apartments above it.

Across the road, an above-ground carpark with a line of one-storey shops will be the first to be redeveloped, also with shops and apartments.

Eastlakes on the move

It’s all go in Eastlakes: kitty-corner to the Eastlakes Shopping Centre, yet another apartment building is under construction, and yet more are apparently planned along Gardeners Road, mostly replacing dilapidated blocks of flats.

The build of all these new apartments, and Eastlake’s proximity to the city centre, will bring an influx of new residents and almost certainly many new shops, cafes and restaurants.

Apartments are still reasonably inexpensive in Eastlakes, although they are often in unattractive three-storey orange brick blocks (which can of course be fixed with a coat of render and paint).

If traffic congestion is dealt with in an effective manner, and new and better public transport links established, Eastlakes may well become the next suburb to rapidly appreciate and gentrify, following in the footsteps of Alexandria and Rosebery.