Beulah International is in talks with authorities to redesign and cut hundreds of millions of dollars of cost from Australia’s tallest residential project as it battles construction costs that have nearly doubled.

But efforts to strip costs out of the Sth Bank project – with a construction bill of about $2 billion in its current form – are pitting the developer against a government keen to ensure it retains the generous public amenity that promises to reinvigorate Melbourne’s bleak Southbank Boulevard.