SP Setia Breaks Ground on Atlas Melbourne, a 73-Storey CBD Residential Tower

Malaysian developer SP Setia broke ground on Atlas Melbourne, a 73-storey residential tower at 383 La Trobe Street in the Melbourne CBD, on September 17, 2026, with Multiplex serving as head contractor on a project carrying a gross development value of approximately A$940 million.

The groundbreaking marks one of the first major large-scale CBD residential towers to commence construction in Melbourne in several years, underscoring renewed developer confidence in inner-city residential demand.

Project Scale and Configuration

Atlas Melbourne will deliver 858 residential units above a mixed-use podium that includes ground- and first-floor retail, foyer space, and resident amenity facilities. The tower rises from a freehold site of approximately 2,850 square metres on La Trobe Street, a core CBD corridor connecting the legal precinct, established office towers, and a growing residential stock base.

Construction value for the project has been cited in the range of A$525 million in Australian development media, while SP Setia's own communications reference a GDV of approximately A$940 million — equivalent to roughly RM2.6 billion — reflecting the difference between construction cost and total development value metrics.

At groundbreaking, SP Setia reported the project was 64% sold, a presales level that signals sufficient buyer commitment to support the commencement of a construction program of this scale and duration.

Construction Timeline and Delivery

The construction program spans approximately 52 months. SP Setia has targeted the first batch of unit handovers for September 2029, with full staged delivery of remaining units by December 2030. The extended program reflects the complexity of delivering a tower exceeding 70 storeys in a dense urban CBD environment.

SP Setia and Multiplex: An Established Melbourne Partnership

Atlas Melbourne is not the first collaboration between SP Setia and Multiplex in the Melbourne CBD. The two firms previously partnered on the Sapphire by the Gardens and Shangri-La Melbourne twin-tower development at 308 Exhibition Street, a mixed-use complex comprising a 62-level hotel tower and a 60-level residential tower delivering approximately 325 apartments. That project, built on a site of roughly 4,140 square metres acquired from Telstra for A$101 million in 2016, carried a build contract in the A$565–600 million range and generated more than 1,000 jobs over a 4.5-year construction program. The two towers reach 232 metres and 220 metres above street level respectively.

The prior delivery of that complex — which included a five-star international hotel brand alongside luxury residential product — established Multiplex as SP Setia's primary contractor for large-scale Melbourne CBD landmark projects and provides a direct precedent for the Atlas Melbourne engagement.

Market Context: A Rare CBD Construction Start

Australian development media have highlighted Atlas Melbourne's groundbreaking as notable precisely because large-scale CBD residential tower starts have been scarce in recent years. A combination of construction cost escalation, financing constraints, and cautious capital deployment led a number of earlier Melbourne CBD residential proposals to be shelved, rescaled, or repositioned. SP Setia's decision to proceed — backed by a 64% presales rate and an established contractor relationship — positions Atlas Melbourne as a signal of recovering momentum in the CBD high-rise residential pipeline.

Freehold CBD land parcels of approximately 2,850 square metres on a core corridor such as La Trobe Street have become increasingly rare, adding a site-scarcity dimension to the project's strategic rationale. For SP Setia, Atlas Melbourne extends a Melbourne CBD residential portfolio that already includes the delivered Sapphire by the Gardens product, deepening the Malaysian developer's footprint in one of Australia's primary gateway cities.

Sources

Multiplex — Multiplex Breaks Ground on SP Setia's New Melbourne Landmark (September 17, 2026)