Innovation Keeps Time & Place’s Southbank Skyscraper Rising

On Queens Bridge Street, which runs at an angle to the Hoddle Grid layout of streets and buildings in the Melbourne CBD, Time &amp; Place have achieved something significant in the current climate. The developer has all but topped out its 65-storey Queensbridge Building. That the skyscraper has risen at 90 Queens Bridge Street, at its intersection with City Road and Kings Way at 90 Queens Bridge Street, points to the developer playing a shrewd game. Because from the start of this project, Time &amp; Place has thought about how to safeguard against potential financial concerns. CoreLogic property records show the 1408sq m site last changed hands for $29.4 million in June of 2020. After it acquired the site, Time &amp; Place turned to Frasers and Partners, and David Flack’s Flack Studio to help design the project. The concept that emerged put within the 10-storey podium a 188-key hotel, offering a bar open to the public. TFE Hotels has signed on to operate the asset as a white-label hotel dubbed Hannah St Hotel. “Hannah St Hotel is a bespoke hotel brand, but our partnership with TFE as the operator allows us to run a boutique offering that’s unique,” Time &amp; Place Queens Bridge brand manager Daniel Denize tells The Urban Developer . But there was more innovation to come. ▲ Fraser and Partners rendering of The Queensbridge Building. Time &amp; Place decided to take a leaf out of build-to-rent developers and operators’ books. It added amenities such as a gym, co-working space, dining space and lounges to the project, and made them available via an app to tenants and owners of the 353 apartments in the skyscraper. Most of those amenities are within the hotel component and operated by TFE. The app system allows Time &amp; Place to cut operating costs and create three markets for the same amenities—hotel guests, tenants and owners. “[It] is this idea of a subscription-based lifestyle so that you can effectively join the Clubhouse and manage access to different parts of the hotel,” Fraser and Partners director Reade Dixon says. “Or you can have your car valeted or you can join a wellness club that allows you to have access to the online amenities of the building.” It also gives access to services outside the building, such as a swim coach, running coach or a dog-walking club, all through a building app that integrates with the hotel. The design innovation flowed to an underutilised space under one of Melbourne’s underpasses—an area established for the community as the Under Park, complete with a temporary basketball court celebrating a local artist. “There are ideas around about how to develop what is a big opportunity—a 5000sq m land parcel under the freeway—into a public asset that will work in support of the building,” Dixon says. The land will be given back to the City of Melbourne to determine what should be done. ▲ Underutilised space was briefly turned into a community basketball court—the City of Melbourne will now decide the future of the space. Time &amp; Place also wanted to emulate buildings in New York and reflect the materiality of Southbank buildings and history. “It almost looks like the elements of the Flat Iron or the Eisenhower building in New York,” Denize says “So with this classical, nostalgic architecture, we thought we want people to come and live above the service offering of a hotel and have it connected, not feel separate, to actually see the benefits of that.” That has paid off with the developer achieving 75 per cent of sales—$35 million was transacted in the past quarter alone. Innovation on the project has extended to the construction process. Construction partners Hickory implemented a process to guarantee pedestrian safety during the build. “One of the investments that we made ... was to have perimeter protection screens that enabled all live edge work to be done behind them,” Hickory managing director George Abraham says. “Normally, you’ll see screens climbing up a building, and when they come to install the facade, they’re doing them off a live edge, and if anything falls, it falls on to the public.” “In this case, we had a screen covering that entire live edge, and we’re doing all our work behind the screen, which means zero risk to the public.” ▲ The Southbank Promenade along the southern edge of the Yarra River is a short walk from The Queensbridge Building. And thanks to its inhouse manufacturing arm, Hickory was able to fend off uncertainty across supply. “All of the podium facade was an exoskeletal, structural facade that was pre-fabricated at our Laverton factory,” Abraham says. “The key value proposition with all of that was it eliminated a secondary layer of construction. “We were able to make it an integrated structural solution ... the window frame becomes the structure and the facade in one ... and it met the aesthetic that the architect was looking for.” Dixon says they are the biggest windows Hickory has done in a supertall tower. “We had to develop a specific installation method for the window sizes that big,” he says. Bringing these riskiest parts of a build in-house is a large part of how the builder derisks its projects, Abraham says. “Hickory self-performs all the reinforced concrete frameworks and all the facade works itself—if a contractor is going to go broke and hurt your project, they’re normally the two that hurt the most,” he says “We don’t rely on anybody for that—we do that work ourselves and that creates the security of our balance sheet, which is why we’re not susceptible to the risks that our competitors are.” The developer and builder are now long-time collaborators: Time &amp; Place and Hickory have completed $2-billion worth of projects during the past seven years. Topping out is expected this month and residents are due to move in during the fourth quarter of this year. The entire project has a gross realisation value of $450 million.

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Marisa Wikramanayake
Mon 05 May 25

Innovation Keeps Time & Place’s Southbank Skyscraper Rising

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ExclusiveMarisa WikramanayakeMon 05 May 25

Innovation Keeps Time & Place’s Southbank Skyscraper Rising

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