Collins Square is the biggest

By Bethany Williams

Docklands is currently home to Australia’s largest commercial mixed-use development.

Collins Square, at 735 Collins St, is being developed by the Walker Corporation.

The $1.3 billion project is located on the block bordered by Collins Street, Wurundjeri Way, Flinders St and Batman’s Hill Drive.

It will feature 185,000sqm of commercial space, consisting of five commercial office towers and a 10,000sqm retail podium.

According to Collins Square project manager Michael Spence, this retail area will be a welcome addition to Docklands.

“There’s lots of good services down here, but they’re distributed across Docklands,” he said. “There’s no single weather-protected destination where you can do everything from buy the newspaper, get a shirt tailored, pick up some fresh food and get your lunch.”

Mr Spence said 48,000 people per day would visit Collins Square when it was finished.

The project also involves the refurbishment of the heritage-listed Goods Shed South, which will be home to the Pearson Australia Group when construction is completed.

Some 40 per cent of Collins Square has already been leased to major tenants including the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and Marsh Mercer Companies.

Mr Spence said the first of the five towers, the ATO building at Three Collins Square, was due for completion in April 2012.

The Goods Shed South is due for practical completion in 2012. One Collins Square, a large proportion of which has been leased by Marsh Mercer, is due for completion in July 2013.

“The strategic importance of this site is that it has over 200 metres of Collins St frontage, so its connectivity with the core part of Melbourne, being the CBD, is still strong,” Mr Spence said.

The name of the development reflects this location.

“The fact that we’ve got nearly 200,000sqm of space here means that the site has the ability to really proudly take some ownership of a Collins St name,” Mr Spence said. “We see ourselves as being the modern equivalent of Collins Place, just the other bookend.”

It is expected that Collins Square will be completed by 2014 or 2015.