Multiplex is back on site at Melbourne Square for the fourth time. The way AURA got to a groundbreaking says as much about apartment construction right now as the tower does.
Multiplex has started work on AURA, an $800 million, 67 storey residential tower at the Melbourne Square precinct in Southbank. Developer OSK Property marked the construction start on 22 September, with completion scheduled for early 2030.
AURA is the fourth tower Multiplex has been appointed to build at the same 20,260sqm site, and the second it will have running there at once. BLVD, the third tower, is still under construction, with settlements starting in October and completion due in early 2028.
The scale is the headline. The more useful story is how a tower this size reached a groundbreaking, and who put up the money to let it happen.
AURA is a 673 apartment tower at the western edge of Southbank
The tower holds 673 residences across 67 levels in studio, one, two and three bedroom layouts, many with multipurpose rooms, alongside penthouses and the Mira Terraces that push living zones outdoors. Prices start from $565,000.
About 1800sqm of retail sits in the base. That joins a precinct already running a 4,300sqm full line Woolworths, a BWS, a Pacific Asian Grocer, a cafe, a restaurant and a Nido childcare centre.
The tower fronts Hoff Boulevard and the precinct’s 3,745sqm Kennedy Park. When the masterplan is finished the site will carry six towers across build to sell, build to rent and mixed use.
More than 140 apartments have sold since AURA launched to market in the second quarter of 2026. On a project of this size, that is the number that moves a tower from approved to underway.
Four offshore banks are carrying the construction debt
AURA is financed through a syndicated loan. The lenders are Maybank International Labuan Branch, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited Sydney branch, Bank of China (Malaysia) Berhad and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Malaysia) Berhad Labuan International Branch, with Maybank leading the transaction as coordinating mandated lead arranger and bookrunner.
That structure is worth sitting with. Domestic construction lending has been selective for a couple of years, and a large share of the Australian development pipeline has been funded through private credit rather than through the major banks.
AURA has gone another way. The equity sits with OSK Property in joint venture with Malaysia’s Employees Provident Fund, described by the developer as the twelfth largest pension fund in the world, and the debt sits with a syndicate of regional and international banks.
Syndicated loan
A single loan facility provided by a group of lenders rather than one bank, with one lender appointed to arrange and coordinate it. Syndication spreads the exposure across several balance sheets, which is how projects too large for a single lender’s appetite get funded.
Maybank Investment Banking Group chief executive Michael Oh-Lau said the financing reflected the quality of the project and the confidence that leading regional and international financial institutions have in OSK’s vision for Melbourne Square.
The fourth tower was won on the three that came before it
Multiplex delivered the first two Melbourne Square towers, is building BLVD now, and has been appointed to AURA. That is a run of work at one address that very few Australian apartment sites produce.
Regional managing director Ross Snowball said the groundbreaking continued a long standing partnership with OSK, and that having delivered the first two towers and with BLVD under construction, the team brings the experience, project knowledge and innovative ways of working that come from delivering multiple stages of a development.
A fourth appointment on a site like this is not won on price alone. It is won on the three towers that came before it.
He also pointed to AI enabled technologies and digital construction tools as part of how the company plans complex projects, which now reads as standard in tier one tendering rather than a novelty.
Running a subcontractor base across consecutive stages has a particular character. Rates, access arrangements, crane and hoist logic, hoarding and site establishment all carry over from the last tower, and the trades that performed on tower three are the ones with the shortest path onto tower four.
Multiplex also has a second Melbourne start on its books this month, with work beginning on the 72 storey Atlas Melbourne tower on La Trobe Street.
The amenity floors will shape a large part of the program
AURA’s amenity runs across three separate clubs. The full floor AURA Club and Gardens on level 7 holds a 25m indoor pool and sun terrace, a gym with yoga and Reformer Pilates areas, hot and cold plunge spas, sauna and steam rooms, dining, lounge and games rooms including a music room set up to double as a podcast studio, and a Japanese inspired teahouse in landscaped gardens with barbecue areas and a firepit. A golf simulator and a substantial coworking space are open to all residents.
The Meridian Club on levels 49 and 50 adds lounges, a bar and private dining rooms facing east. The Cumulus Club on levels 66 and 67, exclusive to premium residences, holds a private dining room, sunrise and sunset lounges, treatment rooms, a private soak bath, yoga, meditation and sound rooms, and a botanical retreat where a Wollemi pine sits at the top of the tower.
Read that as a program rather than a brochure and it is a great deal of wet area work and plant at height. Pools, plunge spas, saunas and steam rooms on three separate parts of a 67 storey tower mean waterproofing, tanking, acoustic separation and hydraulic risers that all have to be sequenced around a single crane and hoist arrangement, at levels 7, 49, 50, 66 and 67.
Amenity heavy towers tend to be won or lost in exactly those zones. They are also where specialist fitout, waterproofing and hydraulic trades find their margin.
Approvals were moving in Victoria’s favour as AURA started
The start lands in a market that has been improving on paper. ABS building approvals for July 2026 put Victoria at 4,642 dwellings in seasonally adjusted terms, up 9.7 per cent on the month, while Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia all went backwards.
Nationally, private dwellings excluding houses were up 19.9 per cent through the year. Apartment approvals have been the stronger half of the national building recovery for a while now.
AURA also arrived with recognition attached. It won Best Apartment Development (Australia), Best Luxury Apartment Development (Victoria), Best Wellness Residential Development and Best Apartment Interior Design at the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards (Australia) in Sydney on 4 September, where OSK Property was named Best Lifestyle Apartment Developer.
What a start like this actually signals
Groundbreakings are easy to report and harder to read. The signal in this one is not the $800 million or the 67 levels. It is the combination of presales, a bank syndicate and a builder on its fourth appointment at the same address.
Each of those three reduces the risk carried by the other two. Presales gave the lenders a reason to commit. The syndicate spread an exposure that no single bank was likely to take on alone. A builder four towers into a site can price the job with less contingency than a stranger would need.
That is the shape most large apartment projects are taking at the moment. For everyone downstream of the head contract, the practical read is that continuity is the asset. The trades performing on BLVD today are the closest ones to another five years of work on the same block.
Frequently asked questions
Multiplex. OSK Property appointed the contractor and work started in September 2026. It is the fourth tower Multiplex has been appointed to build at the precinct, after the two stage one towers and BLVD, which is still under construction.
Early 2030, according to OSK Property. BLVD, the tower ahead of it in the precinct, is due for completion in early 2028, with settlements starting in October 2026.
673 residences across 67 levels, in studio, one, two and three bedroom layouts, plus penthouses and the Mira Terraces. Prices start from $565,000, and more than 140 had sold by the construction start.
Through a syndicated loan from Maybank International Labuan Branch, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited Sydney branch, Bank of China (Malaysia) Berhad and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Malaysia) Berhad Labuan International Branch. Maybank led the transaction as coordinating mandated lead arranger and bookrunner. The equity sits with OSK Property in joint venture with Malaysia’s Employees Provident Fund.
Six, across build to sell, build to rent and mixed use, on a 20,260sqm site. AURA is the third stage and the fourth tower.
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Last updated 23 September 2026. Approvals figures current as at the ABS Building Approvals release for July 2026.
General information only. This article reports publicly available information and is not financial, legal or professional advice. Figures and project details were current at the date of publication and may change. Anyone relying on this information for a commercial decision should verify it against the primary source and seek their own advice.
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