Russell Crowe’s Woolloomooloo home precinct wins global award

Woolloomooloo Wharf apartment complex, where Russell Crowe owns a home, has received global acclaim. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Turns out Russell Crowe has good taste when it comes to housing.

The Sydney’s Harbour enclave where the Hollywood actor has been living on and off for the last two decades has been given the nod in a prestigious global urban planning award.

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

Recognising places that continue to deliver exceptional civic, cultural and economic value decades after completion, the Wharf joins an elite group of global icons that have also received the award.

They include New York’s Rockefeller Centre and Hong Kong’s Pacific Place.

Crowe’s apartment was the highest priced apartment sale in Sydney when he purchased it 22 years ago, with the Gladiator star paying a then record $14.35m.

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Russell Crowe bought into the area fresh off his success in 2000 film Gladiator. Picture: Universal/Getty

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There were whispers within the real estate industry late last year that the actor was considering selling off market, with agents in the area speculating the apartment could be worth well over $40m.

Crowe had been splitting his time at the Woolloomooloo unit and a 100 acre rural property on the NSW Coast.

No exchange has been made to date and the Woolloomooloo property may be worth more after another year of explosive growth in the Sydney housing market.

Crowe’s neighbours on the wharf had included the late broadcaster John Laws, who sold a $12.5m apartment on the water a few years before his death.

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One of the Wharf homes is also owned by billionaire steel tsar Sanjeev Gupta.

The buyers were understood to be billionaire steel tsar Sanjeev Gupta and wife Nicola.

Originally constructed between 1910 and 1915, Woolloomooloo Wharf was once the largest timber piled finger wharf in the world.

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

By the 1970s, containerisation and shifting port activity had left the Wharf derelict and facing demolition.

Its fortunes changed in 1996 when Lang Walker AO and Walker Corporation acquired the site and undertook a $400m waterfront restoration, completed in time for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Walker CEO David Gallant said Woolloomooloo Wharf pioneered a new era of waterfront renewal in Sydney.

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

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

“His tenacity helped preserve a national landmark and created a waterfront community that is still thriving more than 25 years later.”

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

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

“Its conveyors, electric lifts, gantries and magnificent Federation style timber sheds represent an era of craftsmanship that cannot be replicated today.

“Had it been demolished, Australia would have lost irreplaceable chapters of its wartime 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 homes.

The Wharf was redeveloped just before the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Russell Crowe has made other power moves in the property market.

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

“I always look back at my 30-year-old self who made the decision to take the little bit of money that I’d earned at that point, 31, 32 I was, and buy 100 acres in the bush, because somehow I knew I would need that place,” Crowe said.

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

“I bought 100 acres of basically blank bush, no fences.”

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

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