Brookfield Flips Plans from Apartments to Student Digs

Brookfield plans to convert a residential project in the heart of the Melbourne CBD to student accommodation. 

Previous plans filed with the City of Melbourne by the previous owner comprised a 40-storey mixed-use tower at 100 Franklin Street with 267 apartments, a basketball court, office space, retail space, 7 carparking spaces and 213 bicycle storage spaces.

Brookfield now wants to build a 39-storey student-accommodation building comprising 1013 lodging rooms and 1038 student beds, 425sq m of retail space and 2310sq m of communal space.

The new plans have been designed by Cox Architecture.

The tower would not offer onsite carparking but plans include 172 bicycle storage spaces.

Brookfield plans to retain the heritage building on the site.

The 1695.9sq m site is on a block opposite the Queen Victoria Markets and has two street frontages—33.5m at Franklin Street and 50.5m at Blender Lane.

As part of the Queen Victoria Market redevelopment project, a section of Franklin Street will be realigned to connect it to a main road in a bid to allow more traffic to move through and alleviate congestion. 

▲ The site is to the right of the large building in the centre of this image. The Queen Victoria Markets is opposite the corner end of the block. Image: Nearmap

The Brookfield site comprises two lots: 100 Franklin Street, home to the five-storey Burbank House, and 104-106 Franklin Street, which has a three-storey building occupied by Charles Darwin University.

RMIT University is 300m east of the site and the University of Melbourne is 950m to the north.

The new State Library Station is being built a couple of blocks away and Melbourne Central Station is also nearby.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) endorsed granting the previous owner the initial permit, for the residential project, on December 19, 2022.

Demand for student accommodation has risen as student migration ramps up, leading to an undersupply of beds that has sparked an increase in competition for rental accommodation in the broader community.