This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
HIGH-profile developer Tim Gurner is planning another major project in Melbourne’s inner south, acquiring a 4,651 sqm site on St Kilda Road that will make way for an $800 million ultra-luxe apartment building.
The 424-426 St Kilda Road site, home to Illoura House, is the second acquisition for the Build-to-Sell fund, backed by Singapore’s GIC, following the $200 million-plus purchase of 189 Kent Street in Sydney that will also become an $800 million luxury apartment complex across two towers.
Gurner has dubbed the new project the “next Saint Moritz”, a reference to his high-end development in neighbouring St Kilda that saw penthouses set new benchmarks for pricing, while close by in South Yarra Gurner, Qualitas and Newmark Capital are set to turn the Jam Factory retail complex into a $1.5 billion mixed use precinct.
“Saint Moritz showed us the depth of this end of the market and we are excited to evolve and elevate this concept and take it even further with this project,” Gurner said.
Residences will be focused on private nature of the precinct for downsizers and lifestyle upsizers with a focus on wellness, and lifestyle, he said.
The corner site – which boasts three frontages on the corner of St Kilda Road, Toorak Road and Queens Lane – will offer uninterrupted views over the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain precinct, the city skyline and Albert Park Lake.
Once complete, the project will offer walkability to Anzac Station, Albert Park Lake, the Royal Botanic Gardens and Fawkner Park, and be near to the retail and dining of South Yarra.
“I have had my eye on this particular site for over a decade, having cut my teeth with Morry Schwartz on 401 St Kilda Road in 2008 across the road so it’s humbling to be able to come full circle with another site now directly across the road some 15 years later, still with the same aspirations to create a new benchmark for residential design just as 401 did at the time,” Gurner said.
Gurner secured the through an off-market negotiation after the site was taken to market by JLL’s Josh Rutman & Mingxuan Li and CBRE’s Kiran Pillai and Tom Ryan in late 2022. The site is currently home to two six-storey commercial office buildings joined by a five-level atrium, which will be demolished at the end of the current leases.
The vendors were advised by Lewis Tong of specialist Commercial Property Advisory Firm, Advise Transact.
There is a lapsed permit approval on the site, which allowed for an 18-storey building, 51,000sqm of gross floor area, 339 apartments and 292 car spaces. Gurner intends to submit a new planning scheme.
Gurner made headlines this month when he told an AFR Property Summit that “there’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them” and “we need to remind people they work for the employer, not the other way around”, and that the Australia’s unemployment rate of 3.7% should rise by 40 to 50% to reduce “arrogance in the employment market”. Shortly afterwards, he said in a LinkedIn post that he had “made some remarks about unemployment and productivity in Australia that I deeply regret and were wrong”, and that his comments were “deeply insensitive” to employees, tradespeople, and families across Australia affected by cost-of-living pressures and job losses.
