Plans for the $1.7 billion joint-venture development on a 27,000m2 site on Harbour Boulevard were announced by developer Tim Gurner.
The project is described by the developers as having a “self-contained biosphere-like design – the likes of which has previously only been seen in sci-fi movies”. Designated Elysium Fields – a paradise described by Homer in his epic poem, The Odyssey – Gurner, the executive chairman of Gurner Group, describes it as “Australia’s largest utopian wellness precinct”.
Melbourne’s billionaire Liberman family – currently completing a new independently-operated hotel, the 14-storey 191-room Melbourne Place, due to open in August on Russell Street – have the rights to develop the Docklands site and has partnered with Gurner on the Elysium project.
Plans for the Docklands site which had been previously approved have been revised for the Elysium project which now includes a 100-key hotel plus a 250-key “premier” hotel, along with retail, hospitality and wellness facilities and well over 1,000 apartments. No operators have been suggested for the two hotels. The property is on tram lines and within easy reach of Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
The developers say stage one construction is expected to begin on three towers of 600 apartments later this year.
While Elysium will have a dome-like structure over the 3,700 m2 of public landscapes and gardens on the site, it will not enclose the buildings or residents, such as the University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2 near Tucson Arizona that occupies 40 acres with 7.2 million square feet of ecosystems under glass.
The Elysium is designed to revitalise Docklands and is described on Gurner Group’s website as an “innovative fusion of modern health, ancient wisdom and neuroscience” and includes “groundbreaking anti-ageing treatments…cryotherapy and various sauna therapies to advanced medical diagnostics including MRIs and DEXA scans”.
Last December Gurner Group appointed a new CEO, the former head of Australia Post and Latitude Financial, Ahmed Fahour, with a brief to steer strategic growth in real estate, funds management, wellness, property management and hospitality.
