Biggest McDonalds in the southern hemisphere for sale: Smorgons
Members of the prominent Melbourne-based Smorgon family, of whom the late billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Victor Smorgon was patriarch, are selling out of prime Brisbane retail property including the largest McDonalds in the Southern Hemisphere.
The property has pole position on the country’s busiest mall – the Queen Street Mall – which has 26 million people visiting each year. The property, formerly home of hairdresser Stefan Ackerie’s Jo Jo’s restaurant, could fetch up to $100 million.
The Smorgon family have owned the property for 27 years and only recently signed on McDonalds for a 10-year lease with two 10-year options thereafter. McDonalds had been looking for a prominent spot on the Queen Street Mall for more than five years and its new position has it now sitting directly opposite rival Hungry Jacks.
Norman Smorgon and his wife, Tania, are the key Smorgon family members in the holding company Vesco Nominees which owns the property. The husband and wife sold their mansion in Toorak, Melbourne, in 2015 for $19.2 million in what was the third most expensive private property sale of the year in Victoria that year, but have not made any significant property transactions since.
Strategically located
The broader Smorgon family started a divestment of Smorgon Consolidated Industries in 1995 and completed this process in 2007 with the sale of Smorgon Steel to OneSteel for $2.5 billion.
Peter Edwards, who is head of the Victor Smorgon Group and a director of the company that owns the property, was unavailable for comment.
JLL’s director of retail investments for Queensland, Sam Hatcher, with colleagues Seb Turnbull, Jacob Swan and Luke Billiau have been appointed to sell the Queen Street Mall property via an expressions of interest campaign.
The 3771 square metre property includes the 853 square metre McDonald’s as well as an 801 square metre Showgirls. Other tenants include fashion store Forever New and UGG Shop, a Money Exchange, Gellatissimo and a Suncorp bank among other tenants.
Mr Hatcher said the 24-hour retail destination provided a fully leased net income of $4.46 million per annum with a weighted average lease expiry of five years.
Strategically located on the future pedestrian thoroughfare between the new Albert Street cross-river rail station and the Brisbane Live venue at Roma Street, the property provides potential for future flagship retail development over multiple levels with a preliminary scheme prepared by Blight Rayner.
