Handmade Heritage: Orchard Piper Demolition Plan Greenlit

Melbourne City Council has approved an amendment to allow developer Orchard Piper to demolish and rebuild by hand part of a heritage building on the site of its nine-storey East Melbourne project.

The council’s Future Melbourne Committee unanimously supported a plan to allow Orchard Piper to demolish the eastern and northern sections of the rear wing of the building at 364 Albert Street.

“This is a very onerous process,” the deputy lord mayor Nicholas Reece told the meeting.

“As we have all learned, it requires the developer to dismantle the building, brick by brick, then sort and number each of those bricks. It will then be reconstructed in exactly the same manner in which it was first built back in 1873.”

A section of the western part of the next-door building at 366 Albert Street will also be taken apart and rebuilt.

Plans for the 1225-sq-m site were approved back in 2020.  The Jolson Architects design called for a nine-storey building with 13 residential units, a retail tenancy and three office spaces.

However, Orchard Piper received structural engineering advice after the permit was granted indicating that there was a risk to worker safety as well as the heritage buildings’ structural integrity if they continued work on the basement level of the new structure. 

The developer sought an amendment asking to be allowed to take the walls apart by hand. Other work on the site continued while the amendment was considered.

▲ A render of the view from one of the penthouses of the Albert Street development.

Orchard Piper development manager Brad Gore said they were thankful their “meticulous approach to the restoration of the building had been supported by the council”.

“This approval will allow 364 Albert Street to return to its original residential use as one of the last remaining single residences on the Fitzroy Gardens,” Gore said.  “It ensures optimal safety onsite and ensures the longevity of this iconic property.”

Cr Reece told the meeting their planning team had learned some lessons from the application.

“This is far from an ideal outcome,” he said.  “It is not ideal from a heritage perspective, as we obviously want to see significant heritage buildings remained fully intact. And it is also a bad and expensive outcome for the developer.

“We will be more wary in future applications that require building under significant heritage buildings.

“I think we're all going to take this as a learning experience.”

A conservation architect will oversee the demolition and reconstruction process, which will include a survey and a refundable bank guarantee of $200,000.

The original projected cost of the project was $29 million.