Jeff Xu’s Golden Age selling Melbourne Sheraton for $135 million: sources
Property developer Jeff Xu is understood to be selling the Sheraton Melbourne Hotel for $135 million.
The three year old asset, which Mr Xu’s development company Golden Age developed on the ex-Naval and Military Club headquarters at 27 Little Collins Street, includes 175 rooms across the lower 14 floors of a 32-storey mixed-use building.
At the speculated sale price, the $771,428 “cost per key” is believed to be setting an Australian hotel sector record.
Golden Age listed the asset for sale in February, shortly after it agreed to pay Grocon $75 million for a 16-level office building on an adjacent site, 85 Spring Street. This Spring Street property was permitted for a 39-storey, 225 unit residential apartment building but will instead be replaced with a 150-suite five-star hotel.
The 27 Little Collins Street hotel marked the return of the Sheraton brand to Melbourne after almost 10-years away (the brand is now also used at Dockland’s Four Points by Sheraton hotel).
Managed by Marriott International, the Little Collins Street hospitality asset includes an indoor heated pool, fitness centre, day spa and 660 square metres of function space. The rest of the building contains 186 “own your own” residential apartments which were sold separately.
Golden Age built the mixed-use complex on the site it bought for $10 million following a high-profile dispute between the NMC and the Melbourne Club, next door, about how proposed airspace redevelopment plans would affect a Plane Tree
After 127 years, NMC fell into administration in 2008, allowing receivers in 2009 to sell the site to Golden Age, who succeeded in building a 32-storey tower.
Golden Age has a large portfolio of upcoming Melbourne projects including Opera on St Kilda Road, and three towers, rising 12 to 20 storeys and containing a total of 539 dwellings, at The Glen Shopping Centre, in Glen Waverley, 21 kilometres south-east of the CBD.
The developer recently completed construction of Victoria One in Elizabeth Street – the Melbourne CBD’s tallest residential building.
The Sheraton Melbourne Hotel selling agents said the property was still for sale, however other well placed sources believe an announcement confirming the sale and price is imminent.
Any sale would come only a few days after it was reported a consortium including Jerry Schwartz and the Liberman family would develop Sydney’s Four Points Sheraton.
