The potential developer of the former Balmain Leagues Club site has welcomed plans for a road tunnel under that section of Victoria Road, and says the project may justify more apartments in the area.
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The Baird Government's announcement this week that it would extend the WestConnex motorway another kilometre under Rozelle adds another twist to the long-running saga of the Leagues Club, which has financially savaged a football club and left a prime inner-city location dormant and vandalised.
Ian Wright, whose Rozelle Village company is the owner and would-be developer of the site, is expecting an imminent court decision to determine whether his latest proposal to build two 12- and eight-storey residential towers will go ahead.
If Mr Wright is successful, the Balmain Leagues Club could return to a venue which it left in 2010, forced out by the former Labor government's ill-fated plans to build a metro station in the area.
Mr Wright, however, may attempt to modify plans for the area yet again. In 2014, his proposal for 24- and 20-storey towers on the site was rejected by the state government, on the grounds it would have a negative impact on road traffic in the area.
"This WestConnex project around Victoria Road just provides a stronger argument for higher density, particularly on the Balmain Leagues Club site," Mr Wright said on Friday.
"I think it's a great thing.
"The traffic constraints were always the number one argument the former council had against it."
In October, Mr Wright appealed against the former Leichhardt Council's decision to refuse his more recent development application for the site. That application proposed 135 apartments, a supermarket, public plaza and club premises, which was smaller than his previous bid for 247 apartments.
A Land and Environment Court decision on that appeal is due as soon as next week. Mr Wright said that should he be successful, he may then attempt to increase the size of the development proposal.
"That would certainly remain an option available to us," he said.
The chairman of the Tigers, Leslie Glen, said he was concerned the WestConnex proposal could delay the club's return to Balmain, which would be enabled should Mr Wright's proposal proceed.
"We took our club out in 2010, we've been waiting all this time very patiently for the opportunity to return," said Dr Glen.
"As a result of this long-standing impasse we've taken a very savage financial beating," he said, crediting Mr Wright and the Western Suburbs Magpies for help in ensuring the survival of the organisation as part of the Wests Tigers NRL club.
According to Roads Minister Duncan Gay, building a tunnel under Rozelle from WestConnex to the Iron Cove Bridge would remove up to 50 per cent of traffic from Victoria Road around Darling Street.
Work on that tunnel is due to start in 2019, with the overall WestConnex project finished by 2023. The tunnel will require the acquisition of 27 properties on Victoria Road. But a spokeswoman for the agency responsible for WestConnex, the Sydney Motorway Corporation, said the former Leagues Club site "will not be directly impacted" by construction.
