A commercial mini city beckons as Melbourne's southeast flourishes

A commercial mini city beckons as Melbourne's southeast flourishes
Mark BaljakApril 21, 2017

City of Monash planners have recommended that Singapore-backed Frasers Property Australia along with project partner Commercial & Industrial Property (CIP) be allowed to proceed with a multi-staged commercial development that would become one of suburban Melbourne's largest.

Subject to a raft of conditions, the proposal which includes in excess of 60,000sqm of commercial office space is poised to account for a vacant site at 254-294 Wellington Road, Mulgrave. With a development cost of $120 million, the scheme displaces Peters Ice Cream which have occupied the site since 1964.

Peters have moved the bulk of their operations to an adjoining complex, allowing Frasers and CIP to roll out plans for a portion of the 133,259sqm site.

Four separate 8 storey commercial buildings are envisaged; each includes between 13,739sqm and 15,692sqm of leasable space. Designed by Max Architects, 254-294 Wellington Road also sees four multi-storey car parks with an accumulated 2,497 parking spaces, provisions for bicycle parking in each building and a cafe/food tenancy within the ground level of each office building.

An existing heritage building fronting Wellington Road will be maintained and amalgamated into the development.

A commercial mini city beckons as Melbourne's southeast flourishes
211 Wellington Road's Building C. Image: Colliers

The developers play for the vacant 254-294 Wellington Road parcel comes months after work wrapped up on 211 Wellington Road.

Diagonally opposite the Peters site, 211 Wellington Road is a mixed-use project primarily consisting of three commercial buildings. Mazda National Headquarters, Monash University, BSN Medical and BMW Finance are the headline tenants within the project.

Falling under the Monash National Employment and Innovation Cluster which sees Melbourne’s largest concentration of jobs outside the CBD, Frasers and CIP will be hoping that the success of their 211 Wellington Road project is repeated at their new, and considerably larger commercial development across the road.

As large as it is, 254-294 Wellington Road is not the sole commercial development currently on the radar in the area.

A commercial mini city beckons as Melbourne's southeast flourishes
Goodman Group and Salta Properties latest offerings within Monash

Also in Mulgrave, builder Hacer has recently taken on 10 Nexus Court. The 6,000sqm Gray Puksand-designed building is the latest commercial project under construction for Salta Properties within their sprawling Nexus Corporate Precinct.

As that precinct is rounded out by 10 Nexus Court, Salta Properties will move their attention to an adjoining development site at 647 Springvale Road, with an eye toward additional commercial offerings.

Meanwhile Goodman Group is seeking tenants for dual new office buildings within their Ferntree Business Park at 296-324 Ferntree Gully Road, Notting Hill. Buildings Buildings D + N are in the pipeline, and may add as much as 14,500sqm of space to that particular precinct.

Ferntree Business Park is also set to host a Quest serviced apartment complex according to current construction tenders for that particular project.

Mark Baljak

Mark Baljak was a co-founder of Urban.com.au. He passed away on Thursday 8th of November 2018 after a battle with cancer. He was 37. Mark was a keen traveller, having visited all six permanently-inhabited continents and had a love of craft beer. One of his biggest passions was observing the change that has occurred in Melbourne over the past two decades. In that time he built an enormous library of photos, all taken by him, which tracked the progress of construction on building sites from across metropolitan Melbourne.

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