Platinum Hotel Group take out Hay Street Site

Linzhu Australia managed to pre-sell its Hotel development in Pitt Street Sydney to Platinum Hotels, transferring the site for $91.3M late last year, prior to the Corona Virus Pandemic impacting the sector.

Privately owned Linzhu acquired the 1202-square-metre site vacant car park site from Ausgrid in 2014 for $36.9M and obtained a planning permit in late 2017 for a Hotel and tourist accommodation building. The proposed building’s tower is made up of 15 levels of visitor accommodation comprising 306 hotel rooms, 2 levels of retail facilities and 4 basement levels.

Linzh Australia signed up IHG as its operating partner and the property was originally slated as a Holiday Inn in 2017, however as the need for quality accommodation in Sydney CBD have increased in recent years, it became clear that an upscale hotel with a very distinctive character would be successful enabling IHG to move to its new upscale voco brand.

The sale of the site late last year to Platinum Hotels suggests that the project was ready to commence construction. The hotel is estimated to cost $90m and is now scheduled for completion in 2021, however COVID19 may delay completion to 2022.

Prior to COVID19, Sydney was experiencing an under supply of Hotel rooms, prompting a boom in Hotel developments with about 4600 Hotel rooms planned to be added to the Sydney hotel market by the end of 2022.

With international and domestic borders now closed in Australia and across the globe, it will now take several years for tourist numbers to return to post CV levels.