Heritage Shopfront Strip Out and Hand Demolition, Crown Street, Surry Hills

Status: in progress, started June 2026. Client: Hurst Concepts Australia. Location: 598-610 Crown Street, Surry Hills NSW. Scope: hazardous materials removal, soft strip of the shops, hand demolition of the rear two storey structures behind retained heritage shopfronts, footing investigation and preparation for the builder's new work.

Hurst Concepts engaged Perfect to clear out a row of old shops on Crown Street and take down everything behind the heritage frontage so they could build the new development off the retained facades. The street facades stay. The party walls between the shops stay. Everything else, the fitouts, the ceilings, the rear additions and the old services, had to come out through a rear lane barely wide enough for a small excavator.

What the job involves

• Night removal of the street awnings under a road occupancy permit before the facade retention trade started
• Asbestos, lead paint and lead dust removal from the heritage ceilings and linings, cleared by the licensed assessor before strip out
• Wash down of the retained facades for the facade retention trade
• Soft strip of every shop back to brick and joists: linings, ceilings, floors, fitout, redundant services
• Footing investigation pits dug by hand inside the shops for the engineer
• Hand demolition of the rear two storey structures, top down, against retained party walls and occupied neighbours
• Brick load out through the rear lane with a small excavator, bricks sorted for recycling
• Sediment controls along the lane and a letter drop to neighbours under the council conditions
• A 24 t excavator walked in on track mats for the remaining rear structures under the engineer reviewed demolition plan

What makes it hard

Retained facades change everything. You cannot pull a rear wall over when the front wall it is tied to has to stay standing. The rear structures were taken down course by course from the top, by hand, with the party walls left standing and made safe as each section came off. That is slow, it is labour heavy, and it is the only way to do it without damaging what the heritage architect wants kept.

The lane is the other constraint. It is the only way in and out for material, and it is shared with the neighbours. Brick went out in small loads with a compact excavator, sediment controls stayed in along the boundary the whole time, and the bigger machine only came in once there was room to walk it in on mats for the last of the rear structures.

The shops themselves are old. Heritage ceilings carried lead paint and lead dust, and asbestos was found in the linings, so hazmat removal ran ahead of the strip out in every tenancy, with clearances from the licensed assessor before anyone started pulling ceilings. The footing investigation pits were dug by hand inside the shops because there was no way to get a machine in and no appetite for vibration next to a retained facade.

How it is run

One Perfect project manager runs the job with a site supervisor and a hand demolition crew that scales up and down with the stage. Hazmat, strip out, hand demolition and machine demolition are all done by the one contractor, so Hurst has one point of contact instead of coordinating four trades in a lane that only fits one of them at a time.

Where the job is at

As at 19 September 2026 the shops are stripped, the hazmat is cleared, the rear two storey structures are down by hand and the excavator is on site on track mats finishing the last of the rear structures under the engineer reviewed plan.

If you have something similar

Retained facades, party walls, heritage ceilings and a lane for access are exactly the jobs a hand demolition crew is for. If you have a shop row or a terrace that needs stripping and taking down carefully behind a frontage that stays, have a look at our strip out and demolition services, or the commercial strip out in Sydney and partial demolition and propping pages. Otherwise just get in touch and tell us what you are dealing with.