Melbourne-based developer and builder Lowe Living has made a play for its largest project to-date, submitting plans for a $160m mixed-use development in the heart of South Melbourne.
The site, located on the corner of Clarendon and York Streets South Melbourne, consists of an existing 2,000sqm two-level office building, and an adjacent 500sqm car park on Ross Place.
The developer, which has a $450m pipeline of luxury residential and mixed-use sites located in and around Melbourne’s Bayside, purchased the site via an on-market campaign earlier this year.
Lowe Living plans to transform the site into a mixed-use precinct encompassing 1,000sqm of ground floor retail, two levels of premium office and six levels of luxury residential, while retaining the adjacent three-level car park currently on title to service the car parking needs of the office and retail tenancies.
Designed by Woods Bagot, the building form has been imagined as a tiered horseshoe, to allow abundant natural light to penetrate through an eight-level void, deep into each commercial tenancy and residential level.
This has the effect of creating numerous dual-fronted apartments with expansive terraces across the 36 apartments, which will range from 110sqm – 390sqm internally across two, three and four-bedroom offerings.
Visually, the building will be of place with the surrounding late 19th and early 20th century architecture, with Woods Bagot proposing polychromatic brickwork and repetition of rhythm, scale and proportion, while landscape architects Acre, have been engaged to create a verdant botanic setting in both the soaring void and vertical landscapes.
Crucially, the existing car parking bays on title mean Lowe Living can position the retail and commercial parking off-site and deliver a minimum of two car parks per apartment via the on-site basement, complete with private lockable garages that include electric car charging provision.
The building will be targeting a minimum 7-Star NatHERs rating in operation.
Tim Lowe, founder and managing director of Lowe Living, said this latest acquisition represented the next evolution of the business, drawing on its expertise in the boutique development space to leverage more larger-scale residential and mixed-use projects, while retaining a distinct customer focus on luxury owner-occupiers.
“Fundamentally our core philosophy hasn’t changed. We are astutely focused on the luxury owner occupier and downsizer market and have a very specific buyer in mind. By seeking out larger sites in locations like South Melbourne, we can apply this knowledge on a grander scale to projects that have scope for more height and mixed-use applications.
“This allows us to create larger apartments that are still boutique in terms of volume, just with larger floorplates and more amenity to conceptualise. We always have, and will continue to prioritise luxury, and will be targeting $1.4m – $9.5m price points within this South Melbourne project.
“This site in particular, appealed to us because of the demand for luxury commercial in city outskirts like South Melbourne, in particular the distinct lack of super high-end luxury apartment stock in the South Melbourne Market precinct.
“This really was a rare opportunity to find such a large development site in South Melbourne; there really aren’t many remaining undeveloped sites of this scale, if at all.
“We will always retain a focus on the Bayside market but we are keen to support this with a portfolio of larger sites.
“We are actively targeting more acquisitions and ideally want to be developing 1 – 2 larger mixed-use projects per annum,” he said.
Plans were submitted to council in August and are now pending permit approval.
