Besides the built residential block a commercial block was never realized. Multiple block and apartment sizes were designed to house aged residents as well as families.

Originally designed in the 1970s as social housing, the brutalist building in The Rocks district of Sydney with a view of the Sydney Opera House has increasingly become the focus of controversial negotiations regarding sale and private redevelopment since 2015. This entailed the risk of insensitive redesign or even demolition. The S.O.S. Save Our Sirius campaign and many other supporters tried to rescue the building and the living conditions of its community with various public protests, an exhibition project, a petition and more. The heritage council recommended that it be given heritage protection. However, after protests and legal battles focused on the preservation of the architecture and the importance of Sirius as social housing, the attempt to gain listed building status was finally rejected at the end of 2017. One reason for this was that the New South Wales government feared financial losses for the expected sale value of the property. 

Eventually, all long-term residents were forced to leave Sirius. The last remaining resident Myra Demetriou moved out on February 1, 2018. In 2019, Sirius was sold for AU$150 million to private investment firm JDH Capital, who transformed the building into 76 luxury apartments with a total value of over $435 million. While the apartments were fitted with timber, marble and bronze on the inside, the brutalist exterior of the building was largely preserved, but the existing architecture was supplemented and expanded with prefabricated balconies and copper pods. BVN Architecture, the office responsible for the redesign, says that they wanted to retain the basic Brutalist character and make the new building elements clearly distinguishable. The first of the luxury apartments were occupied in summer 2024. 

The architectural redesign and the reinterpretation of its use from social housing to a luxury property is critical, as the essential socio-cultural aspects that Sirius symbolically stood for have been erased. The architectural intervention in the original design is a visual marker for this development (last updated on December 11, 2024).