Source : THE AGE NEWS
Capital Gain
Hot on the heels of the Midtown Plaza’s $154 million sale comes another big Bourke Street Mall listing, next door to the wildly popular Mecca superstore.
Centrepoint Mall at 283-297 Bourke street and its neighbour at No.271-281, the old Leviathan Menswear building on the Swanston Street corner, quietly hit the market this week carrying a price tag of more than $200 million.
The arcade was once fully leased with Rebel Sports and Priceline upstairs and the Pancake Parlour underground, but they are all gone.
Telstra has recently moved in, coming across the intersection from Midtown Plaza, which IFM Investors sold to Sydney-based Coombes Property Group last month. Another leasing deal is understood to be close.
The Mall buildings last changed hands in 1995 for $32 million, purchased by Singaporean investor George Chow’s Ruby Group and now owned by an associate, Great Union.
The transaction history shows just how dramatic Melbourne’s property cycles can be. The two properties were bought by Schroders Property Fund in 1988 for $74.1 million. The valuation dropped to $70 million by 1990, then to $61.3 million a year later, before crashing to $32 million.
The Mall is a three and four-level arcade stretching back to Little Collins Street and the Leviathan building is a five-storey building with a basement and six leased ground floor shops.
Together they cover 14,000 square metres, including nearly 3500 sq m of office space, on a 4132 sq m parcel of land.
It’s a big chunk of the Mall ready to be re-invented. The Mecca store shows how those tired 1980s-2000s renovations can be undone and reimagined.
Colliers agents Tim McIntosh, John Marasco and Matt Stagg have the listing but declined to comment.
Poly’s empty
Chinese property company Poly is selling an empty Docklands building, vacated by department store Myer, that was never fully occupied.
In the biggest leasing deal done this year, the retailer is heading south of the river to Growthpoint’s 75 Dorcas Street where it has signed an 11-year lease on space recently held by ANZ.
Myer is taking 13,679 sq m of the A-grade South Melbourne office, joining Mondelez, Auto Sports and ADCO.
It’s the biggest move made by Myer since the retailer moved out of its CBD offices in 2010 for Docklands and brings together more than 1000 staff under one roof.
Last year Myer merged with Solomon Lew’s Apparel Brands in a $900 million deal. Lew, a longtime major shareholder of Myer, controls 29.72 per cent of the retailer and was due to finally join the board in April.
It’s not such a big move for Apparel Brands which will be moving from around the corner on St Kilda Road.
It’s the first sign of how the new Anzac station, providing speedy access to the South Melbourne fringe office market from the CBD, could shift the leasing market.
Colliers’ Matt Cosgrave acted for Growthpoint while Myer’s brief was handled by Charter Keck Cramer’s Steve Kingston.
Colliers is also handling the sale of Poly’s A-grade Docklands building which Myer is leaving. The 22-level building at 1000 La Trobe Street landed at a difficult time in Melbourne’s office market.
The 39,287 sq m building was completed in 2021 and only ever scored one major tenant with Myer occupying 23 per cent.
The large campus-style floorplates, lauded as a new way of working 20 years ago, are no longer so fashionable and Docklands’ vacancy rate is sitting at 21 per cent.
With the housing crisis front-of-mind, everyone’s pivoting to residential. Next door, Gurner is working on the $1.7 billion Elysium Fields three-tower project.
Sources suggest 1000 La Trobe Street could be worth up to $240 million and it’s pitched as a secure one-tenant option for a major occupier.
Colliers agents John Marasco, Anna Cavar, Joseph Lin and James Mitchell have the listing but declined to comment.
Crown abdicates
A Southbank site where Sydney’s defunct Crown Group was planning its first foray into the Melbourne market has sold to Ashley Williams’ Evolve Development group.
Sources suggest the 2070 sq m site at 175-187 Sturt Street has fetched around $20 million.
Records show Crown bought into the project in 2017 for $7.75 million, proposing a luxury $170 million twin-tower development called Artis.
However, the towers never made it out of the ground after a bitter feud between Crown’s Indonesian-born co-owners Iwan Sunito and Paul Sathio brought the once successful resi developer undone.
Stonebridge’s Julian White and Chao Zhang negotiated the deal but declined to comment.
The sale comes just weeks after a new player entered the property development sector – a joint venture between old money, Justin Liberman from Square Peg Capital, and Paul Solomon, whose family owns the Moose Toys empire.
The pair bought 11 Queens Road for a reported $26 million, which was very close to the price Vantage Property paid for the Albert Park Lake-facing tower in 2014.
Their new business Shor Property + Development is on the prowl, ready to pounce on good sites with prices in the doldrums.
Moon wanes
Demolition looks likely for the old Moonlight Receptions centre in North Fitzroy – once the scene of glorious weddings, and lately a sanctuary for squatters and learner graffiti practitioners.
The City of Yarra’s planning portal indicates an application has been made to demolish the building at 622 Nicholson Street.
While records show Larry Kestelman’s LK Property Group remains the official owner of the 1834 sq m site, SMA Projects has a caveat over the property and is understood to be paying around $15 million.
Kestelman paid $15.1 million in 2018 and got a permit for an eight-storey office project. He tried to sell it in 2020 and again in 2024 when, evidently, it quietly sold to the owner of the site next door.
SMA Projects also owns the 616 sq m parcel of land on the corner of Reid Street. Records show the properties, on a total 616 sq m, were purchased for $6.2 million in 2021.
Colliers agents Jozef Dickinson, Philip Heberling and Georgie Long had the most recent listing.
The deal delivers a 2450 sq m site to SMA Projects who did not respond to a request for comment.
It wasn’t the best example of Kestelman’s usual impeccable timing. In 2018, he trebled his money, selling his office at 10 Queens Road to Chinese investor Everland, for around $60 million. That building, next door to No.11 discussed above, sold last year for $27 million.
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