[+] Making History: Property Industry Reacts to Melbourne Heritage Boost

Famed Canadian-American architect and designer Frank Gehry once said of his profession, “Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness”. Gehry could have been speaking about the Melbourne City Council and the Victorian capital’s central business district. A 100-year-old bookstore, an even older women’s club, one of the city’s first glass towers and a laneway now famous for Australia’s most successful hard rock band will all be given heritage status under a major change to Melbourne’s planning scheme. The six-volume, 4500-page Amendment C387 will protect 121 buildings and five precincts in the heart of the city. “This really is the biggest contemporary heritage review in Australia, certainly one done by local government,” Cr Rohan Leppert, who set the Hoddle Grid heritage review in motion six years ago, said. Re-elected twice in that time, Leppert has finally seen his motion become planning law. ▲ The former Hosie’s Hotel (left) at 1-5 Elizabeth Street. It was built for the 1956 Olympic Games. “Melbourne’s renowned as a walkable, interesting, fine-grained, laneway-focused city, and what the heritage review has done is to acknowledge the strengths that come with a large number of highly variable architectural styles,” Leppert said. Hoddle Grid is the contemporary name given to the 1600m by 800m rectangle of streets that make up the central business district. The grid of streets—named after the surveyor Robert Hoddle and laid out when there were just a few hundred settlers—became the nucleus for what is now Melbourne. Hardware Lane, Flinders Lane, Melbourne House on Little Bourke Street, the Lyceum Club, Hill of Content bookstore, the Swiss Club of Victoria on Flinders Lane and Hosie’s Hotel (built for the 1956 Olympics) are all among buildings ear-marked for heritage protection. The precinct Flinders Lane East—which includes AC/DC Lane and other tourist-popular, art-covered walls—is one of five precincts subject to new planning controls. But it’s the 48 post-war and relatively new buildings protected under the sweeping review that are causing the most comment. Those include the former Gilbert Court and the Coates Building (both in Collins Street), the former Dalgety House office building in Bourke Street and Hoyts Mid City Cinemas, built in the modernist brutalist style. ▲ AC/DC Lane in Melbourne. It falls within the Flinders Lane East Precinct. In recommending buildings for protection, a planning panel said of the period between 1945 and 1975, “It represents a period of prosperity, confidence and optimism and expansion marking Melbourne’s emergence as an international city, with the financial sector in particular looking to establish a corporate presence”. Not all agree. The amendment was exhibited several times over the six years, but in one period late in 2020 there were 66 submissions, including 44 in opposition. A submission from the Australian Institute of Architects warned available land and viable sites were scare within the Hoddle Grid, and careful decisions “will need to continue over the decades to come as we continue to renew building stock and allow for future buildings”. “The extent of the proposed additional heritage controls, in conjunction with other planning controls, such as C270, may have the unintended consequence of preventing meaningful future commercial new builds that are designed to meet emerging and unknown future needs of our society,” the institute said. It urged the bar for heritage protection in the CBD “be kept to a high level of significance and avoid over-reach”. ▲ The former Royal Mail House at 253-267 Bourke Street and the Hill of Content bookstore at 86 Bourke Street. Melbourne’s oldest bookstore celebrated 100 years this year. The Victorian branch of the Property Council of Australia also lodged a submission in 2020. Interim Victorian executive director Cath Evans told The Urban Developer this week that while the council supported the maintenance of heritage listings there needed to be consideration for owners of the buildings. “Working with heritage overlays imposes restrictions on the use of a heritage listing, but also includes a higher economic cost in managing and maintaining the building,” Evans said. “So you've got engineers who have to look very carefully at the maintenance of the facade for the heritage-listed area, there are geologists who get involved in any excavation work that has to be undertaken, and scaffolding that has to be in situ while other building works are under way.” Urbis regional director Matthew Cleary said any new rules around planning and development always added complexity. “There will be some developers who will look at this and will be absolutely mortified by it because it’ll place specific site control constraints on sites they have, either heritage listed or adjacent to heritage listings,” Cleary said. ▲ The Lyceum Club at 2-18 Ridgway Place. The building, finished in 1959, was designed by Ellison Harvie, who was a member of the women’s-only club. “But I think the industry generally has gotten a lot better at adapting in a sympathetic way to developing in and around heritage buildings, as well as the development of heritage buildings themselves.” Hansen Yuncken construction director Matthew Beveridge said they had a lot of experience of the challenges faced working in and around heritage listings. “You quite often have some interesting and sometimes very complex access constraints, which require fairly careful planning to make sure that you can deliver the project effectively and efficiently,” he said. “And certainly you need to be considering the requirements for maintaining the heritage aspects of the building which you may be working in, or demolishing part of.” Cr Leppert is quick to point out the heritage overlay does not prohibit development. “In fact, at a local level redevelopment is very much expected,” he said. ▲ The former Exhibition Towers at 287-293 Exhibition Street and the Lonsdale Exchange at 447-453 Lonsdale Street. Not everyone agreed the exchange was worth saving. “Developers need to know from the outset, what the rules are. So I think a little bit more certainty around the government’s heritage controls actually benefits everyone, not least of which those with an interest in developing a property. “But what I've found is that with an application that proposes a quite radical redevelopment, when you give an architect the challenge of retaining the significant heritage fabric you often end up with a much more interesting outcome.” Frank Gehry would probably agree. Although he is quoted as once saying: “I don’t know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.” A full list of buildings that are receiving heritage protection can be found here. You are currently experiencing The Urban Developer Plus (TUD+), our premium membership for property professionals. Click here to learn more.

[+] Making History: Property Industry Reacts to Melbourne Heritage Boost

Get the full story.

Modular Hotel Rises on Queenstown’s Steepest Site

No Template, No Shortcuts: Divya Mehta on Leadership and Scale

Old Buildings, New Appeal: Heritage Office Interest is Surging in Brisbane

Early Plays Pay Off in Sydney’s Eastern Reform Shake-Up

Comiskey Warns Time’s Almost Up to Beat Games Construction Crunch

A fireside chat with Troy Daffy | Managing Director, Silverstone Developments

Brisbane Long Lunch | Panel discussion with Rob Comiskey, Frank Licastro, Steve Laffey & Alexandra Stuart-Robertson

Sydney Long Lunch | Panel discussion with Jamie Durie, Jennifer Macquarie & Michael Romano

The AI-Driven Developer

Two NSW Developers Face Court Over Building Defects

Wave of Midrise Proposals Washes over North Shore

Walker Corp Reveals 740-Lot Stage of Adelaide Masterplan

Modular Hotel Rises on Queenstown’s Steepest Site

2026 Developer Outlook Lunch | Melbourne

2026 Developer Outlook Lunch | Brisbane

2026 Developer Outlook Lunch | Sydney