Mirvac’s Brunswick Residential Precinct Approved

A residential project proposed by Mirvac for Melbourne’s Brunswick has been granted planning approval by the Victorian planning minister.

Sonya Kilkenny has now approved the $280-million all-electric residential project at 699-703 Park Street, 4km north of the CBD.

The 6500sq m site is an amalgamation of nine lots with several existing buildings, including a former hotel, the Princes Park Motor Inn, and a heritage-listed electrical substation.

It also incorporates the addresses for 2-4 Sydney Road and 182-193 Brunswick Road.

Plans include four-, six-, eight- and ten-storey buildings plus two levels of basement car parking.

There will be 166 premium apartments and penthouses with a mix of one to four-bedroom apartments, 223 car parking spaces and 210 bicycle storage spaces. 

Two commercial spaces and a cafe are also part of the plans.

The site has 100m of frontage n to Princes Park and is next to Princes Hill in the Princes Park Precinct.

The University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Hospital Precinct are nearby.

▲ A render of the Bates Smart-designed developer 699 Park Street in Brunswick.

Mirvac’s plans, designed by Bates Smart Architects, were considered by the state’s Development Facilitation Program which was created to fast-track projects that were shovel-ready, would employ Victorians and could prove that they would generate public benefit.

The developer argued that since 10 per cent of the 166 planned apartments would be set aside for affordable housing, the proposed plans met the criteria for the program.

It did, however, mean that while the City of Merri-bek Council could submit their recommendations as part of the process, the plans bypassed the council and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. 

The council opposed the proposed demolition of the heritage-listed electrical substation on the site, recommending that alternate plans be proposed that retained the building instead.

▲ JW Land tried twice to win approval for a residential tower on the site before selling it to Mirvac for a reported $40 million in mid-2021.

JWLand who bought the site in 2017 for $30 million had previously tried to get two proposals for development approved: one in 2017 for a 14-storey tower with 333 apartments and one in 2018 for a 10-storey tower with 255 apartments.

Both were knocked back by council and VCAT with a group of 1700 residents under the banner Protect the Park Street Precinct opposing the development on the grounds of potential overshadowing and concern around the project’s compliance with guidelines for designing apartments. 

JWLand eventually sold the site to Mirvac in mid-2021 for a reported $40 million.

Mirvac’s future projects include a 15-storey residential project at 31 Queens Lane in Albert Park while it completed its build-to-rent project LIV Munro near the Queen Victoria Markets, late last year.

Its Victorian residential development pipeline is worth $6.8 billion with more than $1 billion in its build-to-rent pipeline that is currently under construction.

The developer has also invested $3.7 billion in its Victorian portfolio across all sectors.