The historic BlueScope general manager's residence sits atop a hill in Port Kembla, surrounded by open land that eventually backs onto suburban Wollongong.
With a circular driveway, billiard room, outdoor lawn tennis court and a filled-in swimming pool, Lindenfels overlooks the city and has all the luxuries fit for the head honchos of one of Australia's most significant manufacturing companies.
And like several large structures on BlueScope land in the area, it is barely used.
"This is an area that surrounds the heart of the Port Kembla steelworks," BlueScope chief executive of Australian steel products John Nowlan said.
"There is roughly 200 hectares and there's quite a few large structures and old buildings that have been installed over the years," he said.
The company has begun an ambitious project to put about 200 hectares of unused land in Wollongong to better use and Lindenfels is part of it.
"There are office buildings, some of which are in use, some of which aren't.
"The old Commercial Building is a beautiful old building and so is the general manager's residence."
Why the luxury house is not lived in
Today, Lindenfels is part museum, part conference centre.
The grass tennis court is recognisable only by remnants of a rusted fence and court lights.
Signs above doorways inside the house describe what each room was used for, while historical photos and paintings of previous general managers and early steelmaking adorn the walls.
Former president George Edgar was the last BlueScope employee to live in the house in the early 2000s until he decided to move out.
He reportedly did not want to be living above his workers.
"We would not have come up here — the senior managers might've been here, but this was the general manager's residence," former BlueScope employee Roy Dixon said.
"When you're young, you think the senior managers are very important people and then as you work your way through and become one of those people, you realise they're ordinary people like you are."
Old buildings part of steel's story
Mr Dixon started working for the company in 1957 and retired in 1998 after a 22-year career.
Some of the vacant buildings BlueScope now wants to repurpose were a major part of his life with the company.
"We started as trainees and moved into the engineering side," he said.
"You did see some changes and we can look back on primitive methods at the beginning when things were heavily people-powered and automation didn't exist.
"Simple things like computers and control systems have been a huge change since I started."
Movie studio a possibility
While Mr Nowlan would like to lease the unused land to companies that complement BlueScope's core business of iron and steelmaking, he is not ruling out room for the silver screen.
"Some land has buildings on it, but there's a lot of vacant open space, so it's a pretty nice palette for someone with imagination and flair," he said.
"I wouldn't like to preclude something like a movie studio because we have some beautiful old buildings, but residential is not what we've got in mind because it's adjacent to heavy industry and the port.
"We're not trying to sell the land. We're trying to crystallise or come up with a plan for how it can be used for commerce and community activities that fit in with what we do."
BlueScope has set up an 18-month program to create a vision for the excess land, including employing an architect and urban design firm to develop a master plan.
