555 Collins Street is a site located on the corner of Collins and King Street in the
Melbourne CBD
The Melbourne central business district (also known colloquially as simply "The City" or "The CBD") is the city centre and main urban area of the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, centred on the Hoddle Grid, the oldest part of the city la ...
. Enterprise House, an office building that replaced the
Second Empire Second Empire may refer to:
* Second British Empire, used by some historians to describe the British Empire after 1783
* Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396)
* Second French Empire (1852–1870)
** Second Empire architecture, an architectural styl ...
Federal Coffee Palace
The Federal Hotel and Coffee Palace was a large elaborate Second Empire style temperance hotel in the city centre of Melbourne, Victoria, built in 1888 at the height of Melbourne's Boom era, and controversially demolished in 1973. Located on C ...
, has been demolished for redevelopment into a 85,000sqm two stage office development.
In October 2018 Charter Hall, an Australian property investment group, bought the site; they plan to build two office buildings in conjunction with the adjoining 55 King Street property, which they already owned. Demolition of Enterprise House began in May 2019, and permission to build the two towers, the first to have 34 levels, was granted in April 2020.
In December 2020, Charter Hall announced that it had secured Amazon as a major pre-commitment tenant and commenced construction of the new office tower. The new office tower is due for completion in mid 2023.
Enterprise House, a 24-storey modernist concrete office building, replaced the Federal Coffee Palace on the site in 1973; the demolition galvanised preservationists in Melbourne. By the second decade of the 21st century it had become dilapidated and was eventually vacated. Harry Stamoulis, a Melbourne developer, gained special planning permission from Victorian Planning Minister
Matthew Guy
Matthew Jason Guy (born 6 March 1974) is an Australian politician. He has been a Liberal Party of Australia Member of the Parliament of Victoria since 2006, representing Northern Metropolitan Region in the Legislative Council (2006–2014) ...
for a replacement building which would cast shadow on the bank of the
Yarra River
The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, ( Kulin languages: ''Berrern'', ''Birr-arrung'', ''Bay-ray-rung'', ''Birarang'', ''Birrarung'', and ''Wongete'') is a perennial river in south-central Victoria, Australia.
The lower s ...
.
[ In 2013 he proposed an office tower 82 storeys and more than 400 metres tall, which would have been one of the tallest buildings in the world, but in 2014 he sold the property to Fragrance Group, a development company controlled by Singaporean Koh Wee Meng. Fragrance Group proposed a 302-metre, 82-floor mixed-use building containing apartments, offices, and a hotel, which was rejected by the new Planning Minister, ]Richard Wynne
Richard William Wynne (born 6 October 1955) is an Australian politician. He has been a Labor Party member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly from 1999 to 2022, representing the electorate of Richmond. He served as the Minister for Planning ...
.Bates Smart
Bates Smart is an architectural firm with studios in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1853 by Joseph Reed, it is known as one of Australia's oldest architectural firms. Over the decades, the firm's multidisciplinary practices involv ...
.
See also
* Architecture of Melbourne
References
{{reflist
External links
Charter Hall project page
Office buildings in Melbourne