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HH In Focus – Mulgrave

22/03/2021 - Celebration -

The Human Habitats ‘HH In Focus’ series shines a light on HH project success and a chance to celebrate a project’s journey at milestone moments. Today’s article focuses on the recent approval by the City of Monash of Suleman Group’s hotel at 253-269 Wellington Road, Mulgrave.

The Suleman Wellington Road Project involves the redevelopment of an underutilised portion of a key redevelopment site. It will deliver a $50 million dollar re-development located within the Monash Technology Precinct and will deliver a premium hotel offering to be operated by global hotelier, Marriott International.

Suleman Group have a long history of development in Melbourne and this latest project to be approved is a landmark 212 room hotel. The project is a further development and refinement of the vision the Suleman Group brings to all their developments. Their Mulgrave project is set to be a legacy project for the family, adding to their portfolio of mixed use developments, approved and proposed, across the city of Melbourne.

A 30 year Hotel Management Agreement was signed with the Marriott International in November 2020. Human Habitat’s Town Planning Director Will Pearce commented that ‘the timing of this approval could not have been better’, with the City of Monash’s granting of a planning permit late December, ‘an approval just in time for Christmas and immediately following a signed heads of agreement between Marriott International and Suleman Group makes it even more of a milestone for Suleman Group. Hats off to the City of Monash for making the right decision on this occasion,’ he said.

The context of the project involves the redevelopment of underutilised at grade car parking with frontage to Wellington Road for the use of the residential hotel. The 50 million dollar development is located within the Monash Technology Precinct and seeks to deliver a premium hotel in response to Council policy support for short stay accommodation and continued investment within the Precinct.

The architectural design takes cues from the existing modernist heritage office building, the former BHP Melbourne Research Laboratories, located within the existing commercial office precinct. Lead architects WMK Architecture have taken the rectilinear proportions, added ‘with a refined material palette consisting of concrete, expressed steel, with glazing featuring predominately throughout the design’, says Steve Tillinger, WMK Director. ‘Refined simplicity coupled with an inherent honesty in expression positions the hotel within the landscape both natural and built redefining the address and presentation of this entire precinct to Wellington Road,’ he said.

HLA Group Director Zoran Pavlovich has worked closely with the project team in his capacity as Project Manager across a number of Suleman projects. Mr Pavlovich has been instrumental in crafting the vision and the delivery of the project over a number of years. ‘Suleman Group is very excited in the achieving this key milestone, and closes out 2020 in what has been a very challenging yet ambitious year for the group’ he said. ‘The project could not have been achieved without the determination, dedication & drive from all our key stakeholders and we thank them for all the work thus far as we look to bring this design to life.’

One of the clear challenges the site presented to the team was that of heritage. The project included the challenge of developing a site with a heritage citation covering both the built form and landscape area where both of which had been altered. The main heritage consideration was finding that balance of conservation and restoration, and in particular maintaining views to the building from Wellington Road, whilst still achieving the policy objectives of a hotel development with a strong street presence.

‘Heritage is sometimes a subjective planning issue’ noted lead HH Town Planner Rob Williams, ‘Council have shown strong leadership in giving this project the green light’. The fact that the project attracted no objections in this case ‘means that our client has a permit in hand without needing to proceed to VCAT which is remarkable given the scale of this development,’ said Mr Williams.

The careful introduction of the new hotel building will ensure the long term protection and enhancement of the heritage building, whilst also balancing the need for higher density built form and a complementary hotel use within a prominent location.

Human Habitats is proud to have played a role in securing this major planning approval in concert with the client and project team. We look forward to assisting Suleman Group to realise their vision in 2021.