{"id":78819,"date":"2026-08-24T02:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T02:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/78819\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T02:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T02:54:11","slug":"v-leader-strikes-again-on-lonsdale-street-files-pbsa-tower-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/78819\/","title":{"rendered":"V-Leader Strikes Again on Lonsdale Street, Files PBSA Tower Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

V-Leader wants to take its revitalisation of Melbourne\u2019s Lonsdale Street to the next level, filing plans for a 32-level student accommodation project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/a> in place of a previously proposed $400-million office project.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The plans cover 1367sq m of internal student communal space and 474sq m of external space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Lonsdale\u25b2 The site includes the heritage Continental Hotel, home to the Heartbreaker bar.<\/p>\n

Retail tenancies are planned for the lower levels of the tower.<\/p>\n

The four-storey Continental Hotel, one of seven properties V-Leader acquired in the 2022 deal, is a heritage item and will be retained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The plans, designed by Wardle Studio architects, include the creation of an internal pedestrian link wrapping around the corner heritage building.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"V-Leader\u25b2 The ground floor of V-Leader\u2019s project would be allocated to retail.<\/p>\n

According to the plans from Contour Consultants, the site would \u201ccontinue the renewal of this section of Lonsdale Street\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d the application said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report said that it would help meet the target of 119,500 new homes for the Melbourne local government area by 2051.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The project joins a host of other PBSA developments which are being pushed through the pipeline in Melbourne. These include Brarz\u2019 plans to convert its office plans for a LaTrobe Street site into a 719-room student accommodation building, which was approved earlier this year,<\/a> and a student project of 161 rooms at Clayton in Melbourne\u2019s south-east.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

V-Leader were contacted for comment this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"V-Leader wants to take its revitalisation of Melbourne\u2019s Lonsdale Street to the next level, filing plans for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11286,23,7065,855,856,260,12799,68],"class_list":["post-78819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-architectural-design","tag-australia","tag-cbd","tag-development-applications","tag-heritage-protection","tag-melbourne","tag-student-accommodation","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}