Singapore company Well Smart Investment Holding is this week lodging a resource consent application for a five-star, 227-room hotel and retail complex.
The nine-level, 33m-high building is stepped up from Shotover St to Man St.
The current rundown site, occupied by four old houses and two garages, is bordered on one side by the Crowne Plaza hotel and Hay St and on the other by The Lofts Apartments and the Man St car park building.
Well Smart, which has just lodged an application for a 162-room hotel in central Queenstown's Thompson St, also plans to replace the steep steps from Shotover St up to Hay St with new steps, escalators and viewing platforms.
And it will apply to close lower Hay St and turn it into a landscaped pedestrian precinct surrounded by shops and cafes.
Singapore architectural firm FDAT, which also designed the proposed Thompson St hotel, has broken up the Shotover St complex into five ''stacked boxes''.
One of the five is a two-level glazed retail building, including restaurant and meeting rooms, off Shotover St.
The hotel blocks, behind, include internal courtyards.
The Man St frontage ranges from 8.5m to 13.5m high.
The complex is designed to blend in with its neighbours, including the likely development of further high-rises above Man St - rezoned by council's plan change 50.
Well Smart bought the lower site, once owned by Queenstown's Skyline Enterprises, for $9 million in 2015.
It later bought land on the corner of Man and Hay Sts.
As with the Thompson St hotel, the developer intends constructing most of the complex off-site, using a modular system.
Both hotel resource consent applications have been prepared by Queenstown planning firm John Edmonds & Associates' Ben Farrell.
-By Philip Chandler
