Hotspots - All the way along the Bay?
A piece today highlighting the march of apartment living into areas you may not expect. Bay Road joins both Sandringham and Cheltenham with Sandringham Station and Southland Shopping Centre notable markers at either end. With an abundance of vacant blocks and dilapidated light industrial structures, Bay Road lends itself to intensive redevelopment given the abundance of nearby services/amenity.
And so a number of apartment projects have begun in recent months, the most notable being Sandy Hill and The Bay located next to one another, spanning 218-228 Bay Road, Sandringham.
Buxton Constructions website news feed for Sandy Hill reads as follows;
Sandringham's skyline set to change The $50 million stage one of the imposing Sandyhill Apartments in Sandringham comprises 187 of the 495 apartments scheduled to be constructed on the expansive Bay Road site. Rising to eight levels on the south section and six on the north, the complex consists of reinforced concrete post-tensioned slabs, columns and pre-cast panels over a three-level basement incorporating car parking and residents' storage areas.
Excavated to a depth of almost seven metres, the basement – with a drained sub-slab – descends below the water table, requiring the installation of concrete diaphragm retaining walls below ground level. “When the more than 25,000 cubic-metres of soil has been removed and the retention walls are completed, the two tower cranes required for materials handling will be installed and dominate the local skyline for almost two years,” Buxton project manager Lucas Forsyth said.
Next door, The Bay with 112 apartments is also under construction, with Ione Property's description reading as follows
The bay is a unique apartment building built in The hub of Bay St Sandringham, located within a recently remodelled district surrounded by new office buildings. Only 500m to Bluff Rd Medical Centre, 3km to Linacre Private Hospital, 1.2km to Sandringham Memorial Hospital and 100m from Sandringham East Primary & Sandringham College. Shops 1.5km to Bay Rd Shops and Cafes, 2.7km to Southland Shopping Centre and Transport 2km to Sandringham Station.
These two developments combined will yield an impressive 607 new apartments for the area, yet they may be a precursor to what Places Victoria has in store. Currently holding a site at 329 Bay Road Cheltenham, sized at 15,000sqm, the Government agency is also negotiating with the Commonwealth Government to purchase the CSIRO site adjoining 329 Bay Road. At 90,000sqm the CSIRO site is mind-boggling, these two sites combined would deliver a development site of 105,000sqm !
329 Bay Road alone is now subject to an initial Places Victoria proposal, with apartment buildings up to eight levels included amongst the sites mixed uses. Should the CSIRO site fall under the auspices of Places Victoria, Bay Road will definitely be an apartment hotspot of the future.
