Russell Crowe’s Woolloomooloo home turf wins global award – realestate.com.au

It turns out that Russell Crowe has good taste when it comes to housing.

Sydney’s harbor enclave, where the Hollywood actor has lived on and off for the past two decades, has been honored with a prestigious global urban planning award.

Sydney’s landmark Woolloomooloo Wharf, where Crowe purchased a unit in 2003, this week became the first Australian project to ever receive the Urban Land Institute Asia Pacific Legacy Award.

The Wharf recognizes places that continue to provide exceptional social, cultural and economic value decades after completion, joining an elite group of global icons who have also received the award.

These include Rockefeller Center in New York and Pacific Place in Hong Kong.

Crowe’s apartment was the most expensive apartment sale in Sydney when he bought it 22 years ago, with the Gladiator star paying a then-record $14.35 million.

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Russell Crowe bought the area after his success in the 2000 film Gladiator. Image: Universal/Getty

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Late last year, there were rumors within the real estate industry that the actor was considering selling off the market, with area agents speculating that the apartment could be worth well over $40 million.

Crowe split his time at the Woolloomooloo unit and a 100-hectare estate on the NSW coast.

To date, no exchange has taken place and the Woolloomooloo property could be worth more after another year of explosive growth in the Sydney housing market.

Crowe’s neighbors on the dock included the late broadcaster John Laws, who sold a $12.5 million waterfront apartment a few years before his death.

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One of the Wharf houses is also owned by billionaire steel czar Sanjeev Gupta.

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The buyers are said to be billionaire steel czar Sanjeev Gupta and his wife Nicola.

Originally built between 1910 and 1915, Woolloomooloo Wharf was once the largest timber-stacked finger wharf in the world.

It stretched for more than 400 meters and served as a powerhouse of Australia’s wool trade, naval operations and post-war migration.

By the 1970s, containerization and changing port activity had left the quay under threat of demolition.

Its fortunes changed in 1996 when Lang Walker AO and Walker Corporation acquired the site and undertook a $400 million restoration of the waterfront, which was completed in time for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Walker CEO David Gallant said Woolloomooloo Wharf was pioneering a new era of waterfront regeneration in Sydney.

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The late radio broadcaster John Laws also owned a house on the Wharf and was a long-time neighbor of Crowe. Photo: Max Mason-Hubers

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“Lang Walker led one of the most important heritage restorations ever seen in Australia, at a time when demolition was considered the easiest solution,” Gallant said.

“His tenacity helped preserve a national monument and created a waterfront community that continues to thrive more than 25 years later.”

Heritage expert and former director of the National Trust NSW Stephen Davies said the wharf rescue remains one of Australia’s most important heritage victories.

“Woolloomooloo Wharf is one of the finest examples of early twentieth century wharf engineering in the world,” Davies said.

“The conveyor belts, electric lifts, gantries and beautiful Federation-style wooden sheds represent an era of craftsmanship that cannot be replicated today.

“If it had been demolished, Australia would have lost irreplaceable chapters of its war history, its wool shipping identity and the arrival point for generations of migrants. Its preservation changed the way NSW thought about industrial heritage.”

Inside one of the Woolloomooloo Wharf houses.

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The Wharf was redeveloped just before the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

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Russell Crowe has made other power moves in the real estate market.

In a recent podcast with Joe Rogan, Crowe shared how well his NSW North Coast purchase has performed as an investment over the years.

“I always look back to my 30-year-old self making the decision to take the little money I was making at the time, 31, 32 I was, and buy 100 hectares in the bush because somehow I knew I was going to need that place,” Crowe said.

“I could have bought an apartment in the city, but I didn’t.

“I bought 100 hectares of virtually blank scrubland, with no fences.”

Crowe said he bought the block on January 20, 1996, before he started filming LA Confidential. “I look at that 32-year-old and say, ‘mate, well done’,” he said.