MELBOURNE > Carlton Brewery Site - Swanston Square - Bouverie St Apartments - completed & u.c

When this was first announced it would have been something pretty special but now so many quality projects are under construction or approved which only makes this projects success more marginal. They should have had balls and built the thing and it would have been standing ahead of the coming crowd. But I said that about the Grollo Tower : (

Interesting that Contexx is the builder on this.

Ring-in starts work for Grocon
BY:SARAH DANCKERT From: The Australian February 21, 2013 12:00AM
Increase Text Size
Decrease Text Size
Print

GROCON has finally started work at its $1.2 billion mixed-use development at the former Carlton United Breweries site in the Melbourne CBD, but after a recent bout of union strife it has farmed out the building contract for the first apartment tower to another builder.

Fast-growing Melbourne builder Contexx is set to construct the first 536-apartment building at Swanston Square after Grocon tendered out the contract late last year. Multiplex also applied for the contract.

Grocon has taken the unusual step after a dispute with the construction arm of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union in Victoria blew up in August last year.

A company spokeswoman confirmed that it would be the first project in the company's 50-year history where it was not the builder.

She said that the company already had a number of large projects on the go, including office towers in McNab Avenue in Footscray, Collins Street Melbourne, the Emporium project and the Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Parkville.


The spokeswoman said discussions with Contexx were continuing and that construction was expected to start after Easter.

Contexx began advertising in Melbourne newspapers for sub-contractors at the project in December, and in recent weeks earth-moving equipment has been moved in and site works have finally begun at the plot, which has laid dormant since the late 1980s.

The stoush between Grocon and the CFMEU in August last year resulted in a union blockade on all of Grocon's construction sites in Victoria and violent clashes between the union and police at the site of the company's largest project - the CFS Retail-owned $1.3bn billion Emporium retail centre on Lonsdale Street, which was closed for 16 days during the union protest.



Both the union and Grocon are pursuing the matter in the courts and, with the matter still unresolved, building and development sources said that the company was not willing to take the risk that further industrial action would further delay the apartment project.

Grocon bought the site in 2006 from RMIT expecting work to start at the end of 2007. However, so far it has only constructed one building - the RMIT-owned Pixel building - on the 1.9ha site.



The building, previously known as The Portrait, will include 536 residential apartments over 27 levels, and two basement levels, ground level and lobby for commercial uses, and four levels of car parking.

In 2011, Grocon rebranded the planned apartment tower as Swanston Square and reconfigured the apartment project to include a greater number of one-bedroom and two-bedroom units as demand for large apartments dropped and Melbourne's residential housing market fizzled out.

The building's facade will carry a 100m high image of one of the last traditional elders of the Wurundjeri-william clan in Melbourne, William Barak.

The project is expected to include an office tower, a retail complex and other residential towers.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...-work-for-grocon/story-fn9656lz-1226582173834

there is more than jus the portrait tower being built at this stage. as a minuimu there'll be the carpark which is accessed off Bouverie, haven't heard much about the retail for ages so doubt that will be part of the first stage.

In the weekend paper they mentioned there is an archaeology dig going on at this site as part of Permit conditions until the end of March with Grocon to ahve full control from April. You can see in the 2nd and 3rd pics in the area between the pink building and the bluestone facade there is the black fenced off area and the orange mesh fenced off area - in the orange mesh fenced area you will notice it is more neatly excavated and there is a hint of foundations showing through. That is where the dig is.

much of central melbourne has a 'heritage inventory' listing due to the fact the older buildings are generally founded at shallow levels meaning they were just built over whatever happened to sit beneath them before. including in this case expected to be the 1840's-1850's shanty town that proceeded the brewery on this site.

I got the impression from the article they aren't getting as much as they would have liked though. the 'artefacts' sounded like some of the crap I found in my house when I lifted up the floorboards.