Resident’s Appeal Sends Orchard Piper’s Tower to Tribunal

An 18-storey St Kilda Road tower approved by the City of Port Phillip is on its way to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after a resident appealed against the decision.

Developers Luke McKie and Rick Gronow’s Orchard Piper submitted plans for the tower comprising 55 apartments and a 108-key hotel in June, 2022.

The council considered the application at a November meeting and granted permission on December 8.

A resident filed an appeal against that decision with VCAT and a hearing date has been set in June, 2023. 

The tower proposal includes four basement levels, a reduction in the car parking requirements, a day spa and food and beverage premises.

Owners of the 2326sqm site the Carter Group have held the site at 448 St Kilda Road  for more than 20 years ago. It will continue as the landowners after the development is complete.

Singapore-based Kerry Hill Architects designed the plans for the project. 

Council records state the expected cost of works as being $60 million.  In June 2022, the project was expected to have an end value of $300 million. 

A six-storey office building on the site will be demolished under the plans.

“There is a real shortage of high-quality accommodation in the premium parts of Melbourne,” McKie said in June last year.

“There is a lot of newer accommodation in the Docklands precinct and West Melbourne but not many in Collins Street or on St Kilda Road.”

Construction was expected to start in early 2024.

▲ A render of Orchard Piper’s Albert Street project.

Other projects by the developer include 364 Albert Street in East Melbourne where it won planning permission to demolish part of the heritage fabric and rebuild it by hand as it posed a safety risk.

“As we have all learned, it requires the developer to dismantle the building, brick by brick, then sort and number each of those bricks,” City of Melbourne’s deputy lord mayor, Nicholas Reece, said at the time.

“It will then be reconstructed in exactly the same manner in which it was first built back in 1873.”