Crown's tower of power at Barangaroo welcomes who's who of Sydney

Sydney’s towers of power have been a feature of the city’s skyline since 1923 when The Astor was built as our first residential skyscraper and its status as the premier address cemented by the arrival of early residents like artist Portia Geach, arts patron Samuel Henry Ervin and philanthropist Dame Eadith Walker.

There have been various others in the century since, most notably Harry Seidler’s celebrated Darlinghurst building The Horizon when it opened in 1998 with buyers like billionaires Bob Ell and Lang Walker and the late celebrity agent Harry M. Miller. But by 2012 its stature was overshadowed by The Residence on Hyde Park, which has maintained a steady flow of notable owners buying in and selling out of the building since, such as chef Tetsuya Wakuda, China’s “Red Princess” Bao Bao Wan, billionaire shipping magnate Shannian Huang and more recently Delta Goodrem.

Less than a decade later, the CBD skyline is almost unrecognisable from west of the Harbour Bridge, where Crown Residences at Barangaroo is nearing completion. The buyers into Sydney’s tallest residential building confirm that this is not only the country’s most expensive apartment block but is set to be home to a smorgasbord of corporate heavyweights, rich listers and millennial tech entrepreneurs.

Billionaire James Packer claims the largest of the 82 apartments, set over two levels at the fattest centre of the building. It is yet to settle and reveal the exact sale price, reported more than four years as more than $60 million. The company has long maintained its former executive chairman didn’t get any special treatment on the price for the two-storey spread.

When Packer’s purchase was revealed in 2017, he said the building’s 2021 completion would mark a permanent return to his Sydney hometown. However, doubts have been cast on whether he still plans to live in the apartment any time soon, given the controversy around Crown’s casino licence and a potential sell-down of his stake in the company.

Crown’s Sydney casino remains closed after the suspension of its licence when former Supreme Court judge Patricia Bergin confirmed – among other things – reports by the Sydney Morning Herald that Crown had facilitated money laundering at its Melbourne and Perth casinos, but the residential side of the development has so far settled more than $700 million worth of apartments from the 44 newest owners.

Packer’s right-hand man, Ben Tilley, has settled on his apartment, a far smaller 191-square-metre pad of two bedrooms, but with a prime north-facing aspect.

Another Crown investor, long-time Mosman local Anton Tagliaferro – founder of Investors Mutual, which owns about 2 per cent of Crown – has bought in for $10.5 million.

The most expensive sale to settle to date is the $41 million whole-floor spread of venture capitalist Bob Blann, who sold his Rose Bay apartment late last year for $6.52 million.

Hong Kong’s Cheng family patriarch Tony Cheng, who runs the privately-owned commercial property investment firm NGI Investments – which owns half a dozen commercial buildings in the CBD – paid $40.75 million for the whole floor two levels up from Blann. He also owns the cheapest apartment in the block – at $8.5 million – on level 36.

Mary Tartak, the wife of rich-lister Tony Tartak of the waste removal giant Bingo Industries, has settled on a consolidation of two apartments that takes up the whole of level 33 for $40 million. The apartment is expected to be a city escape from the family’s Strathfield home, no doubt to replace the Queensland trophy home Mandalay at Airlie Beach they listed for $20 million last month.

The co-founder of airport lounge app startup LoungeBuddy Zac Altman is only 28, which makes him the building’s youngest buyer to date after he settled on a $12.5 million bolthole. Altman has been based in San Francisco in recent years, having sold the app to American Express a few years after it was valued at $US18 million.

The building’s other resident millennial is online Marketing Gurus chief and co-founder Andrew Raso, 32, who is stepping up to his $11.1 million apartment from his Rozelle home.

Upstairs from Altman is the slightly smaller pad of fellow tech entrepreneur Robin Khuda, whose $10.7 million pad rounds out a property splurge of more than $100 million in the past year alone – from the Byron Bay hinterland to Mosman and Palm Beach – thanks to the runaway success of his hyper-scale data centre operator AirTrunk.

Rounding out the slew of rich listers is businessman Robert Tieck, whose father Norman founded the Franklins supermarket chain. The Tieck family ranked among the billionaire class on last year’s AFR Rich List 200, thanks in large part to their vast commercial and residential holdings under their Gwynvill Group.

The $17.5 million pad of arts philanthropist and former Sydney Lord Mayor Nelson Meers and his wife Carole comes less than a year after they sold their beachfront apartment in Point Piper for $18 million.

Former Rothschild Australia chairman Trevor Rowe and his wife Julie have not moved far to their $13.5 million pad, having sold their three-bedroom apartment in the Highgate building for $5.15 million last year.

Western Sydney developer Arnold Vitocco is not so local, coming from his acreage estate in Bringelly south-west of Sydney to his $22 million pad, and French retail executive Georges Furone-Defforey has long been based in Shanghai from where he is expected to commute to his $12.74 million spread.

Luke Hepworth, the owner of Hepworth Industrial Wear, has moved into his $9.4 million pad, having sold his Birchgrove waterfront home in late 2018 for $6.1 million, and hoteliers Angelo and Sandy Elliott have paid $24.2 million as a downsize from their Centennial Park mansion sold for $14 million earlier this year.