Aria South Brisbane Hotel

Brisbane City Council approved Aria Property Group's three-tower South Brisbane masterplan in late 2025, which includes a 216-room hotel alongside 678 apartments and the restoration of two heritage buildings on a consolidated Melbourne Street site. Designed by Bates Smart and Richards and Spence, the project has no confirmed hotel operator, brand or completion year.

The place

A roughly 7,300-square-metre consolidated site at 164 Melbourne Street, with further frontages onto Manning and Edmonstone streets, in South Brisbane's Kurilpa Growth Precinct.

The concept

Brisbane City Council approved Aria Property Group's three-tower masterplan, designed by Bates Smart and Richards and Spence, in late 2025: reportedly the first project approved under the council's new height limits for the suburb, enabled by the 2023 Kurilpa Temporary Local Planning Instrument. Across towers ranging from 24 to 50 storeys, the approved scheme delivers 678 apartments, a 216-room hotel in the tallest tower, and 21,000 square metres of retail, replacing an earlier, lower-rise office proposal for the same expanded site. The plan restores two heritage-listed buildings at the site's corners (the Art Deco former Bond's Sweets Factory (1951) and Malouf's fruit shop and residence (1913, childhood home of Brisbane author David Malouf)) into retail and hospitality tenancies, and threads pedestrian laneways through the podium toward a central "urban meadow" and amphitheatre. The hotel tower's amenity levels include a suite of pools, private and shared dining spaces, hot and cold spas, saunas, a gym, a half-court, a multi-purpose room and a cinema.

Dining & wellness

Private and shared dining spaces are planned within the hotel tower's communal amenity floors, alongside the restored heritage buildings' retail and hospitality tenancies; no hotel restaurant operator has been named.