Melbourne’s most unexpected developments of 2019
From a $100m water park, to rooftop beehives and a $1m gold nugget, Victorian developers have taken the industry to strange new places in 2019. These are some of the most unexpected.
Forget cookie cutter apartment towers in the CBD, Victorian developers did things a little differently this year.
From announcing the biggest water park in the southern hemisphere, to paying private school fees, and even offering up a $1 million gold nugget, the city’s planners and real estate industry has been kept entertained in 2019.
Take a look at the state’s most unexpected developments.
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MELBOURNE’S BIGGEST POOLED RESOURCE
Few developments made a bigger splash this year than the Zagame and Pellicano families’ proposal for a massive water park in Melbourne’s southeast.
Headed to Dingley Village, proposed plans for Zagame’s Wild Water Park include uphill waterslides, a huge wave pool, zip lines and video-game-like water tunnels.
It’s even got plans for a 423m-long “lazy river”.
The $100 million project, revealed by the Herald Sun in March, combines outdoor and indoor elements, with the latter expected to make it the largest indoor water park in the southern hemisphere.
And while the project came out of the blue, it also hit an unexpected delay with city and local planning authorities.
A delay that in part relates to a frog, a skink and a fish.
Planners asked the developers to conduct surveys on the potentially at risk local fauna across the summer months, which City of Kingston chief executive John Nevins estimated would mean the application could get back on track by March 2020.
Pellicano boss Nando Pellicano has previously indicated the water park could be turned around in the space of two years once planning approval is obtained, pushing back initial estimates of a 2021 opening to 2022.
“We are hoping to make a very big splash,” Mr Pellicano said.
SAM NEWMAN AND SHANE WARNE BECOME SAINTS
There were always going to be a few unexpected developments as Gurner launched a lavish overhaul of St Kilda’s Novotel Hotel site this year.
But few would have forecast his Saint Moritz project could attract an about $30 million sale to Melbourne real estate guru Antony Catalano.
Or that Sam Newman and Shane Warne would join him on the buyers list.
Even Gurner boss Tim Gurner wasn’t expecting it.
“I knew there was a market for ultra-luxury residences on an international scale akin to London or New York, but I had no idea just how deep it went when the product is right,” Mr Gurner said.
To cap it off, outside of a handful of demolition experts, nobody expected removing the old hotel would mean bringing in one of the biggest excavators outside of the mining industry to “crunch” the old hotel out of existence.
With demolitions now finished and further construction underway at the $540 million redevelopment, there’s a fair chance it’ll be in the headlines again next year.
A NEW SUSTAINABILITY BUZZ WORD
Brunswick has long been a mecca for environmentally focused developments.
But in among the rooftop gardens and solar panels, one developer found a new buzz word: bees.
As sustainable sweeteners go, Milieu’s decision to put a communal beehive on the roof of their 59-apartment Breese St complex was out there.
But it did step outside of the hive-minded thinking driving a lot of projects and offered something different, according to the firm’s sales and marketing director Patrick Cooney.
“There’s an appreciation of the neighbourly aspect and the rooftop combination,” Mr Cooney said.
“It (the bees) adds to the overall story at the property and really pushes the sustainability behind the project.”
The project also features architectural design aimed at keeping the apartments between 18C and 27C without the use of heating or airconditioning, a rooftop vegetable patch, has no gas connections and comes with a 7.5-star NatHER’s energy efficiency rating.
Once the building is complete, a rooftop honey specialist will maintain the hives and supply residents with excess honey.
INCENTIVES AND HOME GAMBLES
In a tough market or a correction, developers don’t have the luxury of just cutting their prices.
Slash your prices today and there’s a chance the buyer who purchased off you six months ago at a higher price gets told by their bank they overpaid by the difference, leaving the buyer unable to settle on the property.
Which is why developers offer incentives instead.
And there were some curve balls this year.
Like the Overture project in Kew, where developer CHH Property offered close to $100,000 worth of private school fees to buyers for their apartments and townhouses.
While the townhouses and penthouses cost upwards of $1.7 million, the offer was extended for three years tuition at elite schools including Xavier College, Trinity Grammar, Methodist Ladies College and Carey Grammar School.
In September, Bensons Property Group revealed that one of the next 25 buyers at their Liberty One development in Footscray would pocket $500,000 in cash back.
“The campaign is intended to make a huge difference to the life of a purchaser by returning the money that collectively we might have paid to external real estate agents as commissions for sales and instead giving it to one lucky person,” said sales executive Jayce McMeeken.
More recently that figure was trumped in Ballarat.
On November 23, the Limebrook Corporation announced every buyer at their 400-lot Goldenvue Estate would be offered a chance to dig for a $1 million gold nugget.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GETS A FACE
The year delivered one more unexpected development in December as Pace Development Group revealed they were adding an artificial intelligence-driven concierge service to their future projects; and that they’d spent a few million dollars giving that AI a face.
Rounding out the improbable change to the city’s development industry, Pace boss Shane Wilkinson revealed he’d not only based the face for the AI program on real people — but that it was an amalgamation of his three daughters.
Named Mel, the scifi-style system is currently installed at the front door of the Pace of Carnegie development in the suburb of the same name.
With lifelike facial reactions, programmed to respond to 1500 different queries including helping residents back into their apartment if they lose their key and directing deliveries where to go, the system is expected to be added to mobile phone applications, lifts and other projects by the developer in the coming months.
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Originally published as Melbourne’s most unexpected developments of 2019