MAB unveils 19-storey Tempo Box Hill
MAB Corporation has earmarked a 19-storey apartment complex, Tempo, beside Box Hill’s first skyscraper – a commercial building leased to the Australian Taxation Office.
The residential proposal for 2-4 Bruce Street will replace a former public car park.
City of Whitehorse sold the land which will make way for Tempo Box Hill at well below market value provided MAB, founded by brothers Andrew and Michael Buxton, construct it a 10-floor affordable housing project with 73 dwellings on another part of the block fronting Elland Avenue.
About 14 kilometres east of the Melbourne CBD, Box Hill is arguably now the biggest metropolitan activity centre – replacing Dandenong which is south east and more than twice as far from town.
The T-intersection of Bruce Street with Irving Avenue – about 80 metres from where Tempo is proposed – is also a major entrance to Box Hill Gardens, which MAB said some of its units will have views of.
Elsewhere in this pocket of the suburb, last August, a 920 sqm site at 925 Whitehorse Road, also next door to the ATO office, sold to APH – the new acronym brand name of Australia Poly Holdings – for $13m.
Three months earlier the owners of eight villa units at 12-16 Shipley Street united to offload their 2061 sqm holding inclusive of common areas to a developer for $14.1m.
In 2018 St Paul’s Lutheran Church sold a vacated church at 711 Station Street, on the south west corner of Irving Avenue and also opposite the park, for $29.5 million to a Hong Kong based developer – its first Melbourne acquisition.
Also two years ago a family banked $8m selling a row of shops covering 817 sqm at 941-947 Whitehorse Road, owned since the 1970s.
Box Hill Institute and Orion International were permitted to build a 29-floor mixed-use tower at 16-18 Spring Street, another former public car park, in that year too (story continues below).
Tempo Box Hill
Tempo Box Hill is configured with an 84 sqm food and drink (café) outlet and two office areas on the ground level with two shops on the first floor – a total commercial space of just over 700 sqm.
A circular music room, lounge, gym and library has been designed near the retail zone while communal areas on the eleventh storey include a garden and resort style BBQ and spa deck.
It will contain 159 dwellings – some designed over two floors.
MAB is inviting prospective purchasers to have a say in the lay-out of what it calls “flexible living spaces” sold off-the-plan: one of the kitchen options is for a fixed breakfast bar, or movable dining table which can be matched to the unit’s colour scheme.
The developer is also proposing 210 car parks at its Bruce Street tower – 21 for visitors, 13 for the offices and 13 for the café – and 84 bike bays. Hayball has designed the building with a 10 metre setback at its north and 12m to the south.
The apartment complex is next door to Box Hill’s first skyscraper (pictured, right): the 20-storey, 19,680 sqm ATO office at 913 Whitehorse Road – built in 2015 by Grocon in place of a 7-Eleven and sold by Cromwell Property Group as an investment to FG Asset Management for $156m that year.
Since then, only a handful of the suburb’s new developments have been for commercial buildings (one which was, in tree-lined Thames Street opposite Box Hill Hospital, sold to owner-occupier MS Group for $9.5m in 2018).
Deague Group’s landmark Whitehorse Towers contains Box Hill’s tallest apartment tower rising 36 levels at the high-profile western edge of a Whitehorse Road verge.
