Goodman Group has withdrawn its planning application for Project Mars, a 90MW data center campus slated for the Lane Cove area of Sydney, Australia, abandoning a proposed AU$1.2 billion (US$725 million) investment.

The Australian real estate firm announced the withdrawal this week. An official withdrawal letter was also posted to the New South Wales government's planning portal.

Why did Goodman pull the application?

The company pointed to regulatory change as the decisive factor. Since it began the planning process in March 2025, the policy and regulatory environment for large-scale data center development had "evolved significantly," Goodman said in a post on its website.

"Goodman has carefully considered these changes together with feedback received through the planning process, including the views of the local community," the company said. "Having considered emerging federal and state policy, Goodman has concluded that it will not progress with the development application."

The statement indicates that both federal and state policy shifts, combined with community opposition during consultations, made the project untenable under current conditions.

What was Project Mars?

News of the development first surfaced in April 2025. The site is located at 12 Mars Road in Lane Cove. Goodman had planned:

• Two two-story buildings
• A combined footprint of 18,830 sqm (202,685 sq ft)
• Total capacity of 90MW
• Investment of AU$1.2 billion (US$725 million)

Goodman, traditionally focused on logistics and industrial real estate, has expanded into data centers and now operates or is developing facilities in Hong Kong, Australia, Germany, the US, and Japan.

What remains in Goodman's Sydney pipeline?

The withdrawal does not signal an exit from the Sydney market. Goodman still has multiple data center projects in the city at various stages:

• A 90MW facility on the former ABC television studios site in the North Shore area, currently under redevelopment
• An approved 126MW facility in Guildford West, on a former Castrol site
• A 135MW project in the Macquarie Park area
• A planned 90MW redevelopment of a former Eaton warehouse site in Mascot

Taken together, these four sites represent more than 440MW of planned or approved capacity in Sydney — well beyond the scale of the abandoned Lane Cove project.

What does the withdrawal signal for the sector?

The Project Mars decision underscores how quickly the regulatory picture for hyperscale and colocation development in Australia has moved since early 2025. A developer of Goodman's scale, with an active pipeline across five countries, judged that emerging federal and state policy had shifted enough to make a 90MW, AU$1.2 billion application worth abandoning rather than amending.

The withdrawal letter filed with the NSW planning portal formally closes the Lane Cove application. Goodman's remaining Sydney projects — in North Shore, Guildford West, Macquarie Park, and Mascot — will test whether those sites can clear the same regulatory and community hurdles that halted Project Mars.