UNI PAYS BIG FOR BUILDING
Ex-Forestry Tasmania site bought for nearly three times market value
THE University of Tasmania has paid almost three times market value for the former home of Forestry Tasmania as part of its CBD buy-up.
THE University of Tasmania has paid almost three times the market value for the former home of Forestry Tasmania as part of its rush on Hobart city property.
The ABC reported last night the university had paid $15 million for the Melville St building, which was valued at $5.7 million.
A spokesman for the university told the ABC the purchase was prudent given the university’s potential plans to locate more of its activities in the CBD.
The purchase was one of a number of city properties snapped up by UTAS in recent years.
Late last year the university bought the Fountainside Hotel on Brooker Avenue, following its purchase in May of the MidCity Hotel on the corner of Elizabeth and Bathurst streets.
Both hotels will be converted into student accommodation in an effort to combat a severe accommodation shortage.
In March, the university announced it had secured private investment funding to underwrite a new student complex of about 430 beds, worth more than $70 million, at 40 Melville St, next to the existing Hobart Apartments complex.
Other city properties owned by the university include a 23,000 square metre site on the corner of Argyle and Melville streets, meant for a new $400 million science, technology, engineering and mathematics hub.
However, the university revealed last month the new STEM centre could end up being built in Sandy Bay if a yet-to-be-signed City Deal with the Federal Government did not include funding for the project.
The university already has several offshoots in the CBD including its Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, the Media School at Salamanca, a medical and science precinct centred on the Menzies Centre and the Art School in Hunter St.
A UTAS strategic direction document released late last year said the university needed to save $30 million a year to be sustainable and, without millions of dollars in state and federal government money for new infrastructure, might have closed campuses in Launceston and Burnie.