Spowers adds to the Collingwood development blitz
Long-established architecture firm Spowers has made a return to the Urban.com.au Project Database as the design force behind an application to account for a vacant Collingwood corner plot with a new commercial building.
Located on the south-east corner of Langridge Street and Wellington Street, 51 Langridge Street finds itself at the epicentre of Collingwood's latest development wave. The vacant block of 510sqm is perhaps best known from a passersby perspective as being home to a prominent mural referencing the site's past as the Cats Cosmopolitan Boarding Cattery.
Under new plans on behalf of Pace Development Group, Spowers have created a commercial building that they hope will slot into the rapidly changing Collingwood landscape.
Traditionally an area characterised by commercial and light industrial low-rise development, this particular pocket of Collingwood is riding the wave of renewal as evidenced by a string of high profile commercial and residential projects.
51 Langridge Street is a new slim 11 story proposal; the ground floor restaurant / café space of 82sqm provides street level activation with subsequent office levels adding a total of 3,436sqm of commercial space. Spanning 40.5m, 51 Langridge Street sits above four basement levels with car park access via a car lift.
Across the design's lower levels, Spowers have chosen to continue the trend of presenting a brick-pattern masonry finish to the building; a finish that is very much in vogue currently across a host of recently completed and forthcoming Collingwood developments.
The area surrounding 51 Langridge Street is a hive of development activity. Diagonally opposite Pace Development Group have also begun works on Pace of Collingwood, whilst a further dozen developments are in the immediate blocks surrounding the latest Langridge Street proposal, with the net result an immense change to the area's character and composition.
The most recent and high-profile proposal is that of GURNER's planned 1-57 Wellington Street development, which has garnered its fair share of media attention.
Whilst the previous wave of development across 2013-2014 that swept Collingwood was exclusively residential, the current development cycle is a mixture of residential and commercial proposals, as developers look to capitalise upon current market conditions. This is also the case throughout City of Yarra currently with commercial making somewhat of a resurgence.
51 Langridge Street is also the 28th current listing within the Urban.com.au Project Database for Collingwood, firmly keeping the suburb in the top echelon of Melbourne's development hot spots.