City Road checks in; two new CBD hotel developments in the pipeline

The hotel juggernaut across inner Melbourne is showing no signs of slowing down.

After last week's announcement that Mandarin Oriental will anchor the Zaha Hadid-designed 600 Collins Street, three further projects have come to the fore in recent days. A long expected Southbank project is headed for a construction start, whilst Melbourne City Council is attending to two further hotel-based planning applications.

At 167 City Road, signage for builder Maxcon has appeared across the site's frontage, heralding a start to the project which has been on the drawing for roughly five years.

In line with a construction start, CBRE Hotels has launched a campaign to sell the site and hotel, which is provisionally proposed as an Ibis Styles outlet. First covered by Urban.com.au during 2013, the Peddle Thorp design has taken time to come to fruition, but now has an anticipated completion date of late 2018.

The buyer of 167 City Road will eventually inherit a building which includes 162 hotel suites.

Southbank aside, hotel projects also continue to flow into the CBD, as evidenced by applications for both 563-567 Little Lonsdale Street and 589-599 Little Collins Street.

The former is an exceptionally quick progression, with the Little Lonsdale Street site having only sold during March. Lodged with Council last month, the application for the 336sqm site seeks demolition of the onsite low-rise office building for the delivery of a residential hotel project.

Plans for Pro-invest Developments' expected hotel at 589-599 Little Collins Street have also been lodged during June.

The firm is working on the roll-out of a portfolio of 10 to 15 Holiday Inn Express hotels across Australia, on behalf of the Pro-invest Australian Hospitality Opportunity Fund. Outlined late last year, Pro-invest has targeted roughly 300 suites for the site, along with retail and office uses.

Substantially larger than the Little Lonsdale site, the planned Holiday Inn Express is set to account for two low-rise office buildings.