Original article by Michael Bleby, published here on commercialrealestate.com.au. September 14, 2025.
Developer Sterling Global has set out ambitious plans for a $590 million, 42-storey mixed tower on a prominent Collins Street corner that it acquired from hotels billionaire Bruce Mathieson – seven years after its last big city-shaping project in the Melbourne CBD fell through.
He says the choice of location responds to a renewed demand for luxurious homes in the Melbourne CBD.
“This is part of the change in the area, which continues to evolve in a very exciting manner,” he says.
Last month, Sterling Global secured a permit for its 623 Collins project, which covers 2000 square metres across three titles. The project includes 2700 square metres of office space and a ground-floor restaurant in the 1924 State Savings Bank of Victoria building, as well as retail space, a hotel and 320 apartments in the tower above the adjacent Batman’s Hill Hotel building.
It’s the second time around for the privately owned developer, which in 2016 hired Pritzker Prize-winning French architect Jean Nouvel to design a 70-level tower on the 383 La Trobe Street site that at the time housed the Australian Federal Police’s Melbourne office.
But that project did not go ahead because the AFP exercised its rights to remain in the building. Sterling Global sold the site to ASX-listed Mirvac two years later for $122 million.
It kept looking for another CBD site and acquired the land, majority-owned by the Mathieson family, in a deal that settled in 2023 for $55 million – along with an undisclosed additional payment for the hotel business that it has kept operating since then, according to Sterling Global development director Brandon Yeoh.
“We had been looking at this site for a while,” he said. “We started looking in 2017, from memory. We had early discussions that didn’t go anywhere, and we shelved it.
“It picked up again, and we finally acquired it at a time when hotel guest assets were a bit under pressure. The tourism sector was under pressure.”
New housing development has picked up, driven by rising sales prices and lower borrowing costs, at a time when building costs have largely stabilised after years of soaring inflation. Housing starts jumped nearly 12 per cent in the March quarter to a seasonally adjusted 47,645, the latest official figures show.
Original article by Michael Bleby, published here on commercialrealestate.com.au. September 14, 2025.
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