V-Leader wants to take its revitalisation of Melbourne’s Lonsdale Street to the next level, filing plans for a 32-level student accommodation project.
The developer has applied to the Department of Transport and Planning for a permit to develop its site at 226-236 Russell Street and 157-159 Lonsdale Street in the heart of the Melbourne CBD.
The site is down the road from another V-Leader project, 600 Lonsdale Street, where it has recently applied to the state for a 39-level build-to-rent tower in place of a previously proposed $400-million office project.
V-Leader, founded in 2015 by Andy Zhang, wants to revitalise the Russell-Lonsdale streets site acquired in 2022 in a $50-million deal on a yield of 1 per cent, after former owners Longriver acquired it in 2019 for $49.2 million.
Its new owner plans to develop the site, currently home to the Heartbreaker bar, into a tower with 405 PBSA rooms with 582 beds in a mix of one, two, four and six-bedroom units.
The plans cover 1367sq m of internal student communal space and 474sq m of external space.
▲ The site includes the heritage Continental Hotel, home to the Heartbreaker bar.
Retail tenancies are planned for the lower levels of the tower.
The four-storey Continental Hotel, one of seven properties V-Leader acquired in the 2022 deal, is a heritage item and will be retained.
The plans, designed by Wardle Studio architects, include the creation of an internal pedestrian link wrapping around the corner heritage building.
The land is in the Hoddle Grid, near the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), with public transport connections to the University of Melbourne and other education institutions.
▲ The ground floor of V-Leader’s project would be allocated to retail.
According to the plans from Contour Consultants, the site would “continue the renewal of this section of Lonsdale Street”.
“The existing built form onsite provides a poor contribution to a higher order intersection at the junction of Russell Street and Lonsdale Streets, and the proposal will dramatically improve the amenity of the area,” the application said.
The report said that it would help meet the target of 119,500 new homes for the Melbourne local government area by 2051.
The project joins a host of other PBSA developments which are being pushed through the pipeline in Melbourne. These include Brarz’ plans to convert its office plans for a LaTrobe Street site into a 719-room student accommodation building, which was approved earlier this year, and a student project of 161 rooms at Clayton in Melbourne’s south-east.
V-Leader were contacted for comment this report.