Salter Brothers eye off $700m Sydney skyscraper
Singapore-based SC Capital is advancing plans to pre-sell its planned $700 million mixed-use hotel and office tower in the heart of Sydney, with the project going into exclusive due diligence.
Melbourne-based Salter Brothers is in the frame to buy into the luxury tower.
The hospitality-anchored development at 4-6 Bligh St, which was earlier this year put on the block, will soar 59 storeys and be the first new five-star hotel in the city’s core precinct for more than two decades.
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The development could become a marque part of the Salter Brothers’ funds operation that has indicated its interest in acquiring new hotels across Australia, with an eye to building a portfolio to float.
In September Salter Brothers revealed that it had raised $104 million of equity, some of which went into backing its $150 million purchase of Brisbane’s NEXT Hotel.
It is not known whether the Sydney property could be bundled with the existing assets Salter controls or if would be held separately. Salter Brothers has owned five IHG hotels for the past four years, with the $500 million-plus portfolio spanning Crowne Plazas, Melbourne’s InterContinental Rialto, a Holiday Inn in Sydney and the voco Gold Coast.
If Salter Brothers finalised the purchase it could turn to IHG to run the property and would also mark hopes of a hotel project going ahead, rather than the site selling to an office-focused developer. Salter Brothers has experience pursuing value-add hotel strategies. It is developing a new upper scale hotel, No 475 Flinders Lane, that is slated to be open next year. The company is also opening a Holiday Inn Express on the site of the current Crowne Plaza site in Canberra.
The proposed Sydney skyscraper will rise 226m, making it the city’s tallest hotel. The 421-room property had been mooted as a Hyatt Andaz hotel, complementing the chain’s Park Hyatt Sydney, but it was offered as vacant possession.
The SC Capital tower, slated to be completed in late 2022, will sport conference facilities, “sky-level” food and beverage offerings, co-working space and 5810sq m of A-Grade offices.
The site is now occupied by the 17-storey office building Bligh House, which SC Capital and local manager Fortius picked up for $68m in 2015.
Savills’ Michael Simpson, Vasso Zographou and Ben Azar and McVay Real Estate’s Sam McVay and Dan McVay are handling the sale but declined to comment, as did the parties.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
