Collaboration and community key to Montreal Commons local support
Fremantle is set for one of Australia’s first carbon-neutral buildings, with a recent seminar involving OP Properties, DevelopmentWA, Curtin University and the City of Fremantle exploring innovative ways of embedding sustainability into new developments.
The seminar, held on Saturday 7 November, was the second of two informative community presentations joined by some of the brightest minds in sustainable living and building. Attendees heard from a great line up of speakers who shared their experience, insights and knowledge on environmentally sustainable building techniques and living, more specifically within East Village Knutsford, Fremantle and how to apply them to your own home.
This live streamed event was hosted on site at Curtin University’s L3 Living lab in Fremantle and attended by members of the local community as well as property industry professionals. The webinar can be viewed here, for those who missed it.
The speakers focused on One Planet Living from a global to local to individual context. Over the hour there were four presenters followed by a Q&A panel session. Speakers included:
Luke Parker, Director – OP Properties
Phil Donaldson, Executive Leader – Bioregional Australia
Dr Brad Pettitt, Mayor – City of Fremantle
Dr Josh Byrne, Director – Josh Byrne & Associates
This event series was launched by event partners in response to local community requests to want to learn more about world leading sustainable development and how they can apply and adopt learnings in their own home.
Montreal Commons, Fremantle
The seminars come as OP Properties’ proposed Montreal Commons Fremantle apartment development builds momentum. After highly successful design reviews, community events and public consultation it’s planning application is due to be determined in early December.
The development will consist of 39 apartments plus a ground floor commercial / café unit across five levels and basement parking. The project, designed by Hillam Architects, is on track to be one of the first carbon neutral apartment buildings in Australia. In addition, the internal power trading via Power Ledgers platform will generate a passive income for the future strata company to offset strata levies by % or about $8 per apartment.
The combination of these two initiatives are regarded by industry as highly innovative, as they create a financial incentive for living and investing in low carbon dwellings regardless of whether the buyer is an owner-occupier or investor. Developers are increasingly of the view that in order to accelerate our transition to being a lower carbon economy, these types of win-win outcomes for apartment buyers are critical.
Public consultation on Montreal Commons closed earlier this month, with all but one of the 16 public submission in strong support for the project, an overwhelming positive endorsement by the local community.
Should the project receive approval, OP Properties are preparing to launch the sales and marketing of the project in the new year. To date they have been quite encouraged by improvements to market sentiment across Perth generally and having received a large number of registrations of interest from locals interested in buying an apartment despite not having yet conducted any advertising on the project.
OP Properties is internally funding Montreal Commons but welcomes enquires by individuals who may be interesting in co-investing with them on similar projects in the future.
To learn more about Montreal Commons, visit the project website and to keep up to date register your interest via the ROI page.