Investment Spotlight: Punthill Apartment Hotel - Caroline Springs
Punthill Apartments Hotel Caroline Springs under construction - early June 2020
You only have to drive along the Western Highway to realise that the City of Melton continues to experience an investment boom. Over the next 30 years the population of the City of Melton will grow from 170,000 to just under 500,000.
Many commercial and industrial developments are underway to create thousands of new jobs and new opportunities for existing local businesses to provide goods and services as part of the supply chain.
While the COVID-19 disruption has had a significant impact on many industries, the construction industry has been able to continue on relatively un-impeded. The City of Melton has thousands of hectares of land to be developed, and a large percentage of that is designated as industrial or commercial land which will be home to the jobs that will help support the future residents of our rapidly growing municipality. And that is good news for existing local businesses who can tap into the supply chain for goods and services.
In late 2019, the Veriu Group announced plans to roll out 4 new accommodation locations under its Punthill Apartments Hotels brand. One of those 4 locations is at 1-7 Caroline Springs Boulevard near the corner of Ballarat Rd in Caroline Springs.
Built on the edge of a small lake, this 4 storey development will feature 80 apartments and will offer guests a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments designed to accommodate solo and group business travellers alike. The hotel will also feature conference and meeting facilities, an on-site gym and guest laundry which will provide guests the ease and accessibility of the office in addition to the comforts of home.
The hotel will be targeted at the business traveller with the company of the belief that business travellers are increasingly looking for more unique and localised accommodation experiences within proximity to business hubs. While Caroline Springs is mostly a residential community with some high quality amenities, across the road in Ravenhall, and further south to Truganina are numerous industrial and commercial businesses parks with even more development to come so this hotel will be perfectly situated to service these businesses.
A development of this scale obviously supports local jobs through the construction phase, and then new ongoing jobs will be supported once the hotel commences operations. The added benefit of accommodation is that it brings in visitors to the region, who in turn bring in discretionary spending which can help support local businesses. A basic equation using Council’s economic development modelling tools shows the following:
If an 80 bed hotel can run at an average of 60% occupancy for the year on the assumption that there is one guest in each room, there will be the equivalent of 17,520 guest nights through the year.
Based on industry averages for domestic guest expenditure, 17,520 domestic nights per year would have a direct input of $5.2 million into the local economy
This would support 31 jobs directly, with an additional flow-on effect seeing an additional 11 local jobs supported, so a total of 42 new jobs would be supported each year by those guests. Naturally if a higher occupancy rate is achieved, and guests are encouraged to spend more then these numbers would go up.
The construction is well advanced with the 4 story structure already in place. It will be interesting to see the finishing touches being made on this development over the next 12-18 months, and once complete it is sure to be another outstanding addition to the City of Melton business community.
In addition to the hotel, as part of this development a small retail hub called ‘Springlake Shopping Centre’ will also be built. Dan Murphy’s have been confirmed as the anchor tenant, and there are currently expressions of interest out for other tenancies with options starting from 65m2.
Interested in learning more about why so many businesses are making to decision to invest in the City of Melton? Learn about the ‘5 Reasons to Invest in the City of Melton’.
Bruce Marshall
Coordinator of Economic Development & Tourism