A never-ending legal nightmare for hundreds of apartment owners in a Sydney development inched closer to resolution this week after a court ruled against the builder in a dispute over potentially deadly combustible cladding.
But owners at The Quay in the inner-city suburb of Haymarket have been told they must fork out up to $30,000 per unit to pay for the dangerous material to be replaced, at a total cost of more than $12 million. And a final decision on whether they will be reimbursed is likely to be tied up in courts for years to come as their legal fees balloon.
The tender for the remediation work – coming more than three years after the council issued a fire safety order on the building, and six years since London’s Grenfell Tower disaster that claimed 72 lives – will be discussed by the owners corporation at an extraordinary general meeting on May 1.
“The way construction works in Sydney, it probably will end up double,” said one man, who owns two units in the building and is “up for $60,000”.
“There’s so many people suffering because of this. It’s messed up. The government needs to step in and pay up. Pressure needs to be put on the new government.”
The Quay, a 286-unit, mixed-use deve...
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