ApartmentsClare BurnettThu 08 Oct 26
SP Setia’s $250m Melbourne Hotel-to-Apartment Conversion Plan Greenlit
Malaysian developer SP Setia has been approved to turn a completed ‘cold shell’ hotel tower—previously earmarked for the Shangri-La hotel brand—into apartments.
The development of two towers at 288-308 Exhibition Street, Melbourne has been in planning for several years, since SP Setia acquired the site in 2016 for $101 million from Telstra.
Plans for the two towers were subsequently announced, including the 60-level Sapphire by the Gardens luxury apartment tower and the 62-level Shangri-La hotel building. They had a projected cost of $565 million.
Multiplex reached practical completion on the $600-million towers in 2023.
But SP Setia was already looking for an exit on the 500-room Shangri-La Melbourne project, putting it up for sale in 2022 for $500 million.
Without any takers, and as ongoing discussions with Shangri-La and other potential hotel operators in the following years fell apart, SP Setia went back to the drawing board.
Earlier this year, it announced its plans to convert the building into 393 apartments, submitting its plans to the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP).
With a development value of $250 million, the plans convert the “cold shell” of the hotel tower into 98 studio apartments, 147 one-bedroom, 138 two-bedroom apartments and 10 three-bedroom units.
The revised layouts incorporate Murphy beds (space-saving wall beds) within studio apartments, which provide “greater flexibility and additional usable living space,” according to the assessment report.
The DTP considered this “an innovative and positive response within the context of the adaptive reuse of the existing building,” it said.
The adaptive reuse project includes 2247sq m of retail floor area, 4624sq m of function space in the podium, 1423sq m of indoor communal amenity and another 670sq m of outdoor space.
There would be 487 bicycle parking spaces and only 20 cars.
The tower is linked to the neighbouring residential tower dubbed Sapphire by the Gardens via a skybridge which won the 2022 ASI National Award for Engineering Projects.
The planning report said the bridge incorporated a fine dining and teppanyaki and sushi venue.
The City of Melbourne did not object to the application, recommending only that it demonstrate acceptable residential amenity.
The planning assessment report said the adaptive reuse project makes a “meaningful” contribution to achieving the City of Melbourne’s housing targets of 119,500 additional homes by 2051.
The permit plans prepared by Urbis and designed by Cox Architecture were approved by the Department of Transport and Planning.
In collaboration with builder Multiplex, the Bursa Malaysia -listed developer SP Setia started work on its 72-storey, $525 million highrise last month.
It is the first to break ground in Melbourne since SP Setia’s Exhibition Street project started in 2018.
Located on a 2851sq m site at 383 La Trobe Street, the Cox Architecture and Fender Katsalidis-designed tower will deliver over 850 apartments, and marks the second partnership with Multiplex.
Multiplex has delivered several of Melbourne’s most iconic buildings, including the $2 billion West Side Place precinct, the ‘wave-like’ Premier Tower, the 1000-apartment Melbourne Square and the 100-storey Australia 108.
Main image credit: AX Creative.
