IHG signs New Crowne Plaza Hotel in Melbourne

InterContinental Hotels Group has signed a management contract with investors represented by Grace on Doncaster Group, to establish Crowne Plaza Doncaster Hill in Melbourne.

Scheduled for completion in 2011, the upscale hotel of approximately 150 rooms will be located at 682 Doncaster Road, Doncaster, approximately 15 minutes east of the Melbourne CBD.

Doncaster is the heart of one of the city’s most affluent municipalities and adjacent to several business parks and commercial centres, the Melbourne campus of Deakin University, major retail – including the largest Westfield Complex in Australia – and Box Hill health industry enterprises and educational campuses.

The hotel’s facilities will include a ballroom and naturally lit meeting space, a fitness centre with an outdoor pool, and an all day dining restaurant and bar.

Grace on Doncaster Group represents a group of private local and overseas investors, for whom Crowne Plaza Doncaster Hill is the latest in a string of Melbourne property developments. The 682 Doncaster Road, Doncaster Hill development will be the group’s first upscale hotel project.

IHG will manage the new hotel under the international Crowne Plaza brand, joining a network of currently 15 Crowne Plaza hotels in Australia and over 330 worldwide, equating to nearly 91,000 guest rooms. There are more than 130 new hotels in the brand’s pipeline, including Crowne Plaza Adelaide, opening late 2009.

In Victoria, Crowne Plaza Doncaster Hill will join the recently opened Crowne Plaza Torquay on the surf coast, and Crowne Plaza Melbourne in the CBD.

“IHG has identified Melbourne as a primary city with opportunity for continued growth across all our brands. Doncaster is a particularly attractive location given the high number of business drivers in and around the suburb, the current lack of quality accommodation in the immediate area, and Manningham Council’s strategic framework to attract 4,000 new residents and five million extra visitors to the area each year,” said IHG director of development Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific, Todd Wynne-Parry.

With the final development plans lodged with Manningham City Council, the development group expects final planning approval with a view to commencing construction by late 2009.

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