Student accommodation provider Scape launches Melbourne CBD office project
EXCLUSIVE
An unlikely landlord is behind the Melbourne CBD’s next major office building.
Student accommodation provider Scape Australia this week launched a leasing campaign for a nine-storey, 10,400 square metre commercial building it is constructing at 99 Franklin Street, near the Carlton border.
The office forms part of a mixed-use project covering 97-105 Franklin Street which will also contain retail and a 48-level student housing tower.
The 2000 sqm site at 97-105 Franklin Street made news in planning circles five years ago when former planning minister Matthew Guy permitted it to make way for a 62-storey complex with 367 dwellings and 144 serviced apartments but no car parks (artist’s impression, below, right).
The property also made news as an example of rapidly rising land values in the northern CBD precinct over recent years.
Scape Australia paid $56 million for it in October, 2016.
The vendor, Artemis Hotel Group, paid Banco Group $23 million in 2013 (story continues below).
The property was formerly occupied as a Hertz car rental dealership and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s City Campus Children’s Centre.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Chas Keogh and Adam Shirley-Spencer have been appointed to lease the proposed 99 Franklin Street office.
Scape Australia is offering the commercial building as 9B compliant, which allows it to be occupied by a school.
The complex will contain floor plates of between 791 sqm and 1206 sqm, a unique entrance lobby and end-of-trip facilities.
Mr Keogh said the space is designed to support an occupancy density of one person per 6.6 sqm.
The building is due for completion in the second quarter of 2021.
