Peel off a floor in Peel Street!

This exciting new project at Peel Chambers offers opportunities for individuals, families and businesses to create and live their inner city dreams.

Buyers can have the whole floor of this unique building on its own Title to create an their completely individualised apartment, studio, office or home/office.

The ground floor is currently designated commercial and covers 124 m2 with a basement space of some 67m2, while the 5 upper floors are 152m2 to 164m2

Priced from $600,000 to $700,000 each single floor shell provides:

• Upgraded building services including a new lift, soundproofing, plumbing, fire protection and communication services
• Repainted and restored building facade and windows, including replacing all west facing windows
• Strata titling of complete floors to enable buyers to pursue their vision for either residential or commercial purposes
• A covenant that allows the owners to "do their own thing" while safeguarding the other members of the community title scheme

Peel Street and Leigh Street is where it's all happening in the City with this precinct benefitting from the Council's new lane way strategy, the redevelopment of the Adelaide Oval and the new Royal Adelaide Hospital on North Terrace.

Mixed Use Building - 223 North Terrace

Construction on this building commenced in 1969 as a next door carpark for the South Australian department store John Martins. The iconic store closed in 1998, but the North Terrace car park remained to service the new David Jones store which opened in its place.

The Haywards, a wealthy merchant family that owned "Johnnies" had originally planned to build an international hotel on the rooftop of the carpark. The structure was designed with additional reinforcement to take the extra weight, and the lift shafts were strategically positioned so that they could be extended.

In 2001, Buchan Lee in consortium acquired the air rights above the car park and developed the "Martin Towers" apartment project, which later became known as "223 North Terrace". Construction of the 2 apartment buildings (the "North Tower" and "South Tower") commenced in 2003. The transfer zone of the existing carpark roof between the 2 buildings was developed into a recreational area with a lap pool, spa, sauna, gym and skygarden while the sub-basement of the carpark was set aside for apartment resident parking.

In addition to the carpark and apartment mix, the third use of the building is retail shopping, with many shops in the ground floor arcade joining Rundle Mall, as well as several fronting to Charles Street and North Terrace.

Adelaide - The University City

Our earlier story on international students prompted us to do a little more research on education and its impact on the city.

If asked to name 3 universities in Adelaide, we think most South Australians would respond with Adelaide University, Flinders University and UniSA - the traditional mainstays of tertiary education in this State. However, international visitors might come up with a completely different set of 3 - Carnegie Mellon, Cranfield University, and University College London (UCL). The Torrens Building on the eastern side of Victoria Square is flying the flags for these 3 Universities.

UCL School of Energy and Resources, Australia will become fully operational in 2010.

Cranfield University is a world renowned centre for postgraduate defence and security studies and research. It offers long and short courses to defence organisations and industry professionals in areas including electronic warfare, integrated logistics and explosives.

Carnegie Mellon Heinz College Australia was the first of the three to open for business in the Torrens Building and is one of the top information technology universities in the world.

There is also Kaplan, which last month opened its new premises at 132 Grenfell Street Adelaide, to cater for students enrolled in courses through Kaplan Business School. Kaplan is a leading global provider of education services to individuals, schools and businesses serving over one million students in more than 30 countries.

All this activity means an ever increasing demand for student accommodation. The ipad project in Waymouth Street (containing 220 fully furnished student studio apartments) was completed at the start of the 2009 academic year and filled up rapidly.

A new project, aptly called "The Nest" is underway on the corner of North Terrace and Bank Street in the City. This development will consist of two interconnected 17 level buildings containing 460 rooms designed for student living with a full compliment of facilties including student common rooms. As it is just minutes from both of our North Terrace university campuses we are sure demand will ensure a quick take up.

The City Council's own research predicts that there will be an additional 700 international students per year requiring accommodation in the City. We think this bodes well for the square mile with lots of young people giving it the energy and liveliness that makes a city an exciting place to live and work.