Student Towers Greenlit for Melbourne, Sydney

Two purpose built student accommodation projects have been approved in Australia’s biggest cities as the number of students returning to our shores continues to rise.

The City of Melbourne’s Future Melbourne Committee at its meeting on March 21 voted unanmiously to approve a student accommodation tower at 166-176 Bouverie Street and 183-187 Grattan Street in Carlton.

Canadian firm Brookfield in a joint venture with Citiplan’s accommodation management arm Journal Student Living filed plans for the tower last year.

Those plans, by Jackson Clement Burrows Architects, propose a 15-storey building that also includes three retail tenancies.

The building will comprise 465 beds in 365 rooms across its gross floor area of 13,632 square metres.

The site, next to to the University of Melbourne campus, has 22.1m of frontage on Grattan Street and 56.34m on Bouverie Street.

There will be a basement level for communal recreational spaces plus bike storage for 66 bicycles on the ground floor.

Communal recreational spaces will include a gym, games room, laundry, kitchen and dining spaces in the basement plus an open entertainment area, and a lounge, library and study spaces on the ground floor.

Small study areas will also be on the first, second and third floors.

Journal Student Living also provides support options and services for residents to learn skills, access help and meet others, and engage in community activities.

The project includes the partial demolition of the building at 166-170 Bouverie Street where the the facade will be retained as part of the design. Other buildings on the 1327sq m amalgamated site will be demolished.

Amendments to the plans were made after discussions with the Melbourne Design Review Committee in 2022 which included increased setbacks, reduced upper parapet height and greater articulation in the building facades when viewed from the adjoining streets.

Councillor Davydd Griffiths said residents in the city remembered their student experiences in Melbourne.

“This part of the city has such a long tradition of having students housed in it,” Griffiths said.

“We know that the surrounding suburbs and businesses are excited to see students returning so it's fantastic to see another excellent building being proposed.”

Griffith also commended the proposal for thinking of what the students needed.

“There is so much consideration of what the students’ experience is going to be not just in terms of the built form, but in terms of the services and support that they will receive,” he said.

▲ A render of the approved purpose-built student accommodation project by Wee Hur in Redfern.

Meanwhile, in Sydney, Wee Hur’s 18-storey purpose-built student accommodation project in the inner city suburb of Redfern has been given the green light by the Department of Planning and Environment.

The  Antoniades Architects-designed $53-million tower will provide 409 student beds in 307 studio rooms, 21 ensuited rooms and 37 two-bedroom rooms. 

The State Significant Development plan was initially launched by Wee Hur in early February 2022, with the developer banking on the return of international students.

A range of issues were considered after public consultation, including the potential oversupply of student accommodation in the area, as well as construction and amenity impacts, and the council initially objected to the proposal.

However, Wee Hur removed a section of rooms above the podium to increase the tower setback, stepped the podium, and increased ground floor retail space, resulting in the council withdrawing its objection.

The Department of Planning said the project would “facilitate the renewal of one of the last remaining sites” within the Redfern Town Centre precinct and recommended its approval.

The 1366sq m vacant site on which the student accommodation will be built was a service station until BP Australia sold it for $46.1 million to Wee Hur.

While student accommodation faced uncertainty during the pandemic as student accommodation development came to a standstill, the Property Council of Australia has said that Australia could still be facing with a crisis in the sector.

A surprise edict by the Chinese government this year prompted students to return to on-campus, face-to-face to ensure their foreign education credentials would be recognised on their return to China.

It meant thousands of students were expected to return to Australia for study this year, at a time when all forms of residential development are in critical short supply.