A Parkville vision finally realised
Over a decade ago works began on the 2006 Commonwealth Games Village which post event was rebadged as Parkville Gardens. The development and subsequent retrofit was headed by The Village Park Consortium; a joint venture between Citta Property Group and Australand which still endures onsite today.
During the initial development, a sizeable tract of land abutting Citylink was set aside for the purpose of flanking the arterial road with multiple high-rise apartment towers. Recent years have seen the development partners pursue a string of low-rise and medium density apartment projects, far from the 15-20 level buildings envisaged in earlier concept designs.
Relatively minimal builds such as Ville, The Green and Hyde have taken their place within the Freeway Apartments Precinct bounded Cade Way and Galada Avenue, with no high-rise towers in sight.
The tide however began turning with Jardin, an eight level apartment complex which was recently completed by Buildcorp Commercial. With the sell out success of Jardin's 90 apartments under their belt, Citta and Australand have reeled off three high-rise projects in rapid succession, capitalising on the robust demand for apartments in inner city locales.
With its tower crane freshly erected, Thrive Parkside represents the first high-rise in the precinct with its 15 levels of 134 one and two bedroom apartments mostly accounted for. Buildcorp Commercial are once more the builder for Thrive which is officially Stage 7 of the Freeway Apartments Precinct, and may be favoured to undertake the next tower dubbed Flourish Parkside.
At 12 levels Flourish contains 81 one and two bedroom apartments and abuts Thrive. As per previous projects within the precinct, Flourish is also a creation of SJB.
With Flourish yet to break ground, another project within the precinct has emerged carrying the name Prosper Parkside. With some distinctive SJB design features, Prosper is a 14-15 level residential apartment project located on what is currently a vacant block of land on the corner of Cade Way and Galada Avenue.
Nestled between existing buildings and fronting Village Oval, Prosper looks to be the largest project undertaken within the precinct to date. It remains to be seen whether Prosper correlates to an active planning application currently before authorities which was submitted during February of this year covering Stage 8 of the Freeway Apartments Precinct, or whether the application is for yet another forthcoming project.
What is apparent is the upward trajectory in scale that recent projects have taken within the Freeway Apartments Precinct. Accounting for the three towers outlined above, the precinct master plan still allows for a further four residential buildings east of Flourish.
While the composition of these four projects is as yet publicly unknown it might be assumed that based on the success of the projects released to date, future builds will be of a similar high-rise nature. It may have taken the best part of a decade but Parkville Gardens looks to be finally gaining its high-rise mojo as envisaged many years ago.
