Fourteen kilometres from Sydney Harbour, on one of Lindfield’s most coveted streets, The Prescott is reimagining what a family residence on the Upper North Shore can be.
For all its harbourside glamour, Sydney’s most interesting property story this year is not unfolding on the waterfront at all. It is taking shape fourteen kilometres inland, on the leafy Upper North Shore, where a boutique developer with a deeply personal stake in the project is about to redraw the map of what luxury apartment living looks like outside the city’s usual ‘postcard’ suburbs.
The Prescott sits at 24–28 Middle Harbour Road, Lindfield – a street of established homes, jacaranda canopies and a rare quietude that belies its proximity to the city. Rising nine storeys above its garden setting, the development comprises a collection of 93 substantial two, three and four-bedroom family-scale residences, inlcuding a single penthouse. Designed by renowned DKO Architecture, with interiors by internationally-acclaimed Woods Bagot, the building has been conceived less as a block of apartments and more as a private enclave – one intended, its developers say, to feel in keeping with the freestanding houses that surround it.
That ambition is the guiding idea behind People Purpose Time, the Sydney-based asset management and development company behind The Prescott. Founded by Vy Hua and Anh Duong after more than three decades in international business, banking technology, finance, commerce and professional services, the company takes its name – and, it insists, its operating philosophy – from ikigai, the Japanese concept of a life well lived. It shows in the numbers: People Purpose Time secures full financial backing before a single spade goes into the ground, and retains meaningful ownership in every building it delivers. The founders intend to live at The Prescott themselves once it is complete, an alignment of interest between developer and resident that is unusual in a market more often defined by volume and exit.
Nowhere is that philosophy more evident than in the amenity offering, which reads less like a typical residents’ facility list and more like the brief for a private members’ club. There is a residential lounge with dedicated concierge, a business centre and co-working suite for those who work from home but would rather not work from the kitchen table, and a private dining room with its own kitchen for entertaining beyond the scale of a domestic gathering. A wine cellar and library sit alongside screening and music rooms, while the wellness offering runs to a pool, gymnasium, yoga studio, steam room, infrared sauna and cold plunge – amenities one would expect to find at a five-star spa rather than an apartment building. All of it is set within landscaped grounds designed for slower, more leisurely use.
“Our vision is to introduce a more considered expression of luxury apartment living to the Upper North Shore, with resident amenities designed as beautiful extensions of the home,” says Vy Hua, co-founder of People Purpose Time.
“Each space responds to how people genuinely want to live, work, entertain, connect and recharge, with the attention to detail, quality of finish and service associated with luxury hotels.”
It is a claim developers make often and deliver on rarely, but The Prescott’s origins lend it more credibility than most. The project began not as a speculative development but as a family’s search for a permanent home. Hua and Duong purchased a property on Middle Harbour Road with the intention of settling there long-term; conversations with neighbours led to the amalgamation of three adjoining lots, and what began as a house became a residential community.
“Our first project is deeply personal because it began with our own family’s property purchase and a desire to make a lasting home in Lindfield, a suburb we love and intend to stay in for the long term,” Hua explains.
“Securing development approval means we can now get to work on delivering that vision, and at the same time, set a standard for everything that follows in our pipeline across Sydney.”
That pipeline already includes sites in Killara, Canterbury and Hurlstone Park, each earmarked for the same unhurried, design-led approach.
Location, too, does much of the work at The Prescott. Middle Harbour Road is among the most sought-after addresses on the Upper North Shore, and the project occupies its eastern, more exclusive flank – an eight-minute walk from Lindfield railway station, and within easy reach of the private and selective schools, cafés and parkland that draw families to the area in the first place.
For residents accustomed to the space and permanence of a house, but drawn to the convenience of apartment living, it is a rare middle ground: the scale of a family home, the amenities of a hotel, and a developer who intends to be a neighbour rather than simply a name on the temporary hoarding.
The Prescott is expected to set a new benchmark for the Upper North Shore on completion. For a market long defined by its waterfront trophies, it is worth watching a project that stakes its claim several suburbs back from the harbour – and asks buyers to reconsider where, exactly, luxury in Sydney ought to live.
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Image: People Purpose Time
