Melbourne’s Sheraton Hotel slides onto market

Developer Golden Age has put the Sheraton Hotel Melbourne on the block for up to $140 million as it looks to reshuffle its holdings after buying another major site in the city.

Golden Age, owned by Chinese-born Jeff Xu, last month snapped up an adjacent site in Melbourne’s Spring St from private developer Grocon for about $75 million.

Selling the completed hotel will allow the company to cash in on the rising value of hotel assets and help it fund its new projects in Melbourne and Sydney.

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The Sheraton is considered a prize of the city’s hotel market and sits at the “Paris end” of Little Collins St, near the city’s celebrated laneways that house top shops, restaurants and the city’s main theatres.

It has 174 rooms and also features an indoor heated pool, a fitness centre, a day spa and 660sqm of function space.

We’re very pleased to be offering this exciting opportunity to purchase one of Melbourne’s most prestigious and contemporary hotels

The hotel is part of a larger 32-storey mixed use development that also houses 142 residential apartments, and a further 44 luxury residences and penthouses in the top six floors of the tower. JLL’s Mark Durran is handling the hotel sale.

Golden Age’s purchase of the adjacent site from Grocon could allow it to undertake a new $300 million mixed use hotel and apartment project and was seen as a mark of its confidence in the city’s unit market even as lenders and regulators take a more cautious stance.

Since 2006, Golden Age’s property arm has amassed $3 billion in residential and commercial projects in Melbourne and Sydney. Projects include the Melbourne central business district’s tallest residential tower, Victoria One, as well as the luxury Collins House on Collins St, a 57-level, pencil thin tower.

Developments in Sydney include a site in Sydney’s leafy Double Bay and towers in The Rocks and others at Waterloo and Macquarie Park.

Golden Age managing director Xu says: “We’re very pleased to be offering this exciting opportunity to purchase one of Melbourne’s most prestigious and contemporary hotels,” he said.

The Sheraton was the group’s first major project and was developed on the old Naval and Military Club sites.

This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.