CommercialHudson FarrMon 05 Oct 26
Green Light for Melbourne Tower After Decade of False Starts
A 62-storey mixed-use tower has finally secured planning approval for a long-troubled Power Street site in Southbank, which has a decade-long history of approved designs that never left the drawing board.
But the proposal got over the line only after the state government exempted the proposal from standard exhibition and panel processes.
The approved amendment, gazetted on September 22, 2026, replaces the site’s existing July 2021 planning approval with a new tower designed by Grimshaw Architects for GL Investment Co Melbourne Pty Ltd.
The 62-storey building would comprise around 480 apartments alongside office, retail and medical centre floorspace.
The 21-35 Power Street and 38 Freshwater Place landholding has form when it comes to planning approvals that don’t translate into cranes on site.
In 2013, an application was lodged for the site by Freshwater No 6 Pty Ltd via Urbis, proposing 482 apartments, 390 hotel rooms and retail and office space.
That morphed into the 2015 approval granted by then-planning minister Richard Wynne to Singapore’s M&L Hospitality, for the 73-storey, $400-million Ultimus Tower designed by Metier 3’s Andrew Norbury.
Construction was scheduled for 2016. It never happened, and the site was sold to GL Investment Co Melbourne Pty Ltd with the permit intact.
By 2020, GL Investment Co was reportedly gearing up for construction on a 76-storey tower. That too, stalled.
In April 2021, Melbourne’s Future Melbourne Committee declined to support a revised 52-storey Grimshaw-designed office tower for the site, citing inadequate setbacks and poor ground-level activation given the density of the surrounding Southbank precinct.
Despite that knockback, a version of the scheme went on to be gazetted in July 2021, the version this most recent approval has superseded.
This month’s approval is, at a minimum, the third distinct planning permission for the site in just over a decade.
The September 2026 planning documents represent a significant pivot–from the office tower approved in 2021 to a housing-heavy mixed-use scheme, with residential now the dominant use.
At least 21 per cent of the office component’s net lettable area, a minimum of 11,542sq m, must be promised for non-residential use for at least a decade, while a separate agreement secures a $600,000 affordable housing contribution.
The scheme will also deliver a publicly accessible through-site link connecting Power Street to Freshwater Place, with opportunities for public art and retail activation along the way.
Construction must commence within five years of gazettal and be completed within seven, with the Minister retaining discretion to extend either date on written request.
The Department of Transport and Planning approved it on housing supply grounds through a ministerial intervention pathway that allowed no third-party submissions, citing Victoria’s 80,000-home target and the City of Melbourne’s goal of 134,000 more homes by 2051.
Delegate Erin Baden-Smith found further notice was unlikely to change the outcome, pointing to consultation already completed with Melbourne City Council, Transport for Victoria and Melbourne Water.
Whether the change in mix and the five and seven-year construction deadlines are enough to get diggers on site remains to be seen.
The Power Street address has, after all, been approved before.
