Melbourne to get its first Shangri-La hotel

Plans are underway to build a 64-storey twin-tower development in Melbourne that will be the home of Victoria's first Shangri-La hotel.

The prospect of the hotel setting up in Victoria is expected to boost tourism and employment.

A Hong Kong based hotel chain has signed a deal with Malaysian developer SP Satia to create the 500-room hotel in one of the buildings on the corner of the Exhibition and Latrobe streets.

The deal was done after SP Setia acquired the site for $101 million.

Overlooking the city’s exquisite Exhibition Gardens, the $640 million development would also have a matching residential apartment tower.

The twin towers will come together at the 50th floor.

The development will offer about 2000 square metres of office space.

It will also have more than 1820 square metres of retail space for Melbourne’s best shops at the lower levels.

That’s that almost 4000 square meters on the lower floors occupied by offices and retail space.

When completed, the towers will be the fifth and sixth tallest buildings in the Melbourne CBD.

Melbourne City Council voted to approve the development which now needs to go to the state government for final approval.

If it gets the nod, it will become the first Shangri-La hotel in Victoria.

Shangri-La hotels have already been established in Sydney and in Cairns where it serves a key attraction for the popular tourist destination in northern Queensland.

It will be a handy addition for the hotel chain which operates 99 hotels across Asia, Europe, North America, the Middle East and Australia.

It has more than 38,000 total rooms under its banner.

Jamie Govenlock, a spokesperson for Australian architecture firm Urbis which has been hired to work on the proposed hotel, told reporters the development will create more than 1000 jobs for Victoria.

by Leon Gettler, May 17^th 2017