Is Melbourne about to get its first 'pod' hotel?
A development site on City Road in Melbourne’s Southbank has been put back on the market, offering the opportunity to develop one of Melbourne’s first “pod” hotels.
The site at 63-69 City Road, Southbank, currently home to low-rise commercial buildings, was under offer to a Chinese investor in mid-2015 but the deal fell over after new planning controls were announced by Planning Minister Richard Wynne.
The vendors – Julie Moss, owner of Melbourne’s Photography Studies College, and Webjet non-executive director Steven Scheuer – pulled the property from the market and sought a permit for a hotel with New York-style miniature rooms.
Having secured a permit for a four-star hotel with 270 pod-style rooms over 30 storeys (along with a number levels dedicated to education space), Ms Moss and Mr Scheuer have relisted the site with $15 milllion price expectations through Michael Ryan, James Gregson, Joseph Walton and Martin Huang of Allard Shelton.
Around 240 of the rooms measure just 17 square metres each, about half the size of a standard hotel room.
Mr Ryan said securing the hotel permit had arisen from a flurry of buyer inquiries from hungry developers eager to make their mark in the hotel boom.
“The hotel sector appears to be outperforming many of the other property sectors in the Australian property market at the moment. Not only are we rapidly growing as a population, Melbourne is also a major business hub and a safe, tourist destination,” Mr Ryan said.
