This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
SINGAPOREAN group Fragrance has disposed a controversial Hobart site that formed part of its $230 million plans to build the city’s two tallest towers.
Australian Property Journal revealed late last year that an off-market agreement had been reached with Tasmania-based Blackstone Industries Pty Ltd for 2-6 Collins Street.
The Singaporean group has netted $9.57 million from the sale.
Fragrance, which owns a number sites across the city and Tasmania, bought the 3,009 sqm parcel near the corner of Brooker Highway and Macquarie Street for $5.5 million in 2016, and lodged an application with Hobart City Council the following year for a 495-room hotel building rising 75 metres.
At the same time, it also submitted plans for a 400-room hotel at 28 Davey Street standing 120 metres. The pair would have been the Hobart’s tallest.
Public backlash pushed Fragrance to slash the height of Collins Street down to 50 metres, but the plans still received 1,459 representations – all but three against the hotel – in what local paper The Mercury revealed as the highest number of official public comments ever received for Hobart development plans.
The revised design included 256 rooms, a 1,000-seat conference hall and other conference facilities, meeting spaces, restaurants, retail, pool, wellness centre, and three levels of car parking with 167 spaces.
Hobart City Council formally rejected the development in January of 2019.
Fragrance entered into the sale deal as the planning tribunal dismissed an appeal against its plans for a $50 million hotel in Launceston of 44 metres.
Fragrance is no stranger to contentious designs in Tasmania. Just a month before the rejecting the Collins Street tower, Council slapped down plans for an $80 million twin residential and hotel tower project in North Hobart – that had come in second on The Mercury’s list of representations.
It did achieve some success in September, however, gaining approval for a 45-unit apartment block on the former Conservatorium of Music site on Sandy Bay Road after trimming the height from 33 metres to 27 metres.
Fragrance is headed up by Singaporean billionaire developer James Koh, who is also known as Koh Wee Meng. In 2018, it emerged as the developer that acquired the former Myer property at 179 Macquarie Street – having previously appealed against development plans for the site, which is next to its Ibis Styles Hobart hotel. It is currently building a new nine-storey hotel on the site.
That acquisition gave Fragrance control over nearly the entire western frontage of the Hobart CBD street between Harrington Street and Barrack Street, except for the Travelodge site.
One year ago it added the Devonport Waterfront Hotel to its Tasmanian holdings in a $40 million deal. Vendor and builder Fairbrother – from whom it acquired the Collins Street property – had just started construction of the 187 room hotel, on the former site of the Best Street Harris Scarfe store.
Fairbrother bought 2-6 Collins Street in 2014 for $4 million from Roberts Limited.
