Michael and Jenna Jones and neighbour Patrick Quintal are worried about their Canterbury apartments.Credit:Nick Moir
“It could potentially be on the same level as Mascot Towers,” said Quintal,29,comparing their troubled complex,Vicinity at Canterbury,to the sinking building that massive structural defects have rendered unliveable since 2019. “The number that’s been thrown around to repair our building is around $50 million.
“I can’t begin to express how emotionally damaging it is walking through the hallways of my complex,seeing the defective calcium-stained balustrade wall crumbling even further than the day before;seeing another notice on a door that a bank has foreclosed on someone;seeing a crack that seems to be just that much bigger than the day before. So many of us are reaching the end of our tethers.”
It has now been one year and nine months since a structural engineer hired by the owners warned that the tower,part of the 276-unit complex,was at risk of collapse,followed by emergency propping put into place and a series of building work rectification orders slapped on by the NSW building commissioner. The latest was on July 7 this year.
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A hearing is due to take place at the Land and Environment Court on July 27 and 28 for NSW Fair Trading to enforce the orders against developer Toplace. There’s also a hearing at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal on July 19 to extend the period of compulsory strata management.
But with the owner and founding director of Toplace,Jean Nassif,wanted in relation to a fraud investigation and being hunted by police overseas,the apartment owners are despairing of their homes ever being fixed.
“It is so stressful,” said Jones,37,a communications professional who moved in six years ago when his wife was heavily pregnant and who now has two children,aged five and two. “It’s something you end up thinking about all the time. It really weighs you down.