Burgess Rawson to sell entire office floor

“When we moved in we took up about three-quarters of the space, but now we’re bursting at the seams,” Burgess Rawson agent Raoul Holderhead said.

The agency, which has a mass auction of 81 properties scheduled for March 30, is moving into Charter Hall’s Wesley Place at 150 Lonsdale Street.

Colliers agents Mr Kirwan, Mr Davies and Leon Ma are handling the expressions of interest campaign, with help from the vendors.

Over the summer Colliers sold eight vacant strata offices, including part of level 5 at 55 Swanston Street for a record building rate of $8438 a sq m.

An off-shore investor sold the office on a fast 30-day settlement to a local owner-occupier. Colliers sold $128 million worth of strata office last year, with owner-occupiers making up 80 per cent of the buyers.

 Celtic club

Level three of the old Celtic Club hotel has sold two years after its previous owner rejected the option to purchase space in the pub.

Beulah International, the developer which built the 48-level Paragon skyscraper above the pub, has sold the 301 square metre office, which comes with a 117 sq m balcony, for $3.15 million.

A local financial services organisation has bought the office at 320 Queen Street, paying a bumper cold-shell building rate of $10,465 a sq m.

The deal was negotiated by CBRE agents Alex Brierley and Nathan Mufale and Colliers agents George Davies and Anthony Kirwan, who received seven offers for the property.

Riven with bitter infighting, the Irish social club, also known as the Celtic Club, sold the hotel to Beulah for $26 million and was expected to take up space in the old pub after the tower’s construction was complete.

The club, which last year bought the Limerick Arms Hotel in South Melbourne for $5.3 million, rejected its old digs because it would not be permitted to share an elevator with the new residents upstairs.

Beulah International, who has a permit to build the tallest building in the southern hemisphere on the old BMW site in Southbank, was advised by Mark Wizel of Advise Transact.

Little Lon

Also on the market, across the road from Burgess Rawson’s spanking new digs, is 152 Little Lonsdale Street.

The three-level office building, built in 1966, is for sale for the first time in 46 years.

The fully-leased building is on a 404 sq m site on the corner of Davison Place and was for many years occupied by a city newsagency.

Records show it was purchased in 1976 for just $252,000. It’s expected to sell for around $15 million when it goes to auction on April 6.

Colliers agents Daniel Wolman, Oliver Hay, Matt Stagg and Leon Ma and Allard Shelton’s Joseph Walton, Christian Hatzis and Michael Ryan are running the show.

Lucky Coq

Colonial Leisure Group has snapped up the Windsor Hotel, where it has operated the Lucky Coq pizza joint for 15 years. Records show it changed hands for $7.3 million.

The hotel, once known as The Duke of Windsor, is at 179 Chapel Street on the corner of High Street.

The Caneva family had owned the pub for more than 50 years and operated the Duke until Colonial took over in 2006.

The grungy hotel where rock band Jet played both pool and gigs, turned into a pizza pub.

The deal, negotiated by CBRE’s Mathew George and Scott Callow, represented a site value of more than $20,500 a sq m.

Lawyer’s office

A lawyer’s office in Dandenong’s activity precinct fetched $14 million over the summer.

The two-storey office at 40-42 Scott Street is on a large 2166 sq m site

Records show IBISWorld boss Justin Ruthven slapped a caveat on the office in late January.

The deal was transacted by JLL agents Josh Rutman, Tim Carr and MingXuan Li at a building rate of $5374 a sq m.

Mr Carr said several offers were received for the property after an “exhaustive sales process that ran through Melbourne’s extended lockdown period – where no inspections could take place.”

The 2605 sq m building is anchored by Macpherson Kelley Lawyers and was acquired in 2004 for $4 million.

Dandenong’s tightly held commercial precinct has come a long way since the state government committed to its regeneration in the early 2000s.

The Grollo family’s 8-level Australian Tax Office building, completed in 2012, is now on the market with expectations of more than $170 million.

Caravan parks

The end of summer heralds the listing of no less than three caravan parks – two in proximity to a beach and the third, a rare metropolitan opportunity.

The Crystal Brook Tourist Park, one of only two freehold caravan parks remaining in Melbourne, is expected to fetch in the $9 million range.

The 3.88 ha park at 182 Heidelberg-Warrandyte Road in East Doncaster is budgeted to return more than $1.41 million in income for 2022.

HTL Property’s Andrew Jackson and CRE Brokers’ Kevin Connolly are handling the sale.

Down at Hastings, there are no caravans left at Peninsula Parklands estate which is pitched as a “manufactured housing estate”.

The 58,000 sq m site at 249 High Street has 191 two-bedroom pre-fabricated cabins on site. Residents own their own cabins and pay rent on the land they occupy.

CBRE agent Scott Callow is running the expressions of interest campaign which is expected to produce a sale in the low-to-mid $20 million range.

Across the bay on the Bellarine Peninsula, the Collendina Caravan Park at Ocean Grove is on a huge 30 hectare beachfront parcel with 328 camping sites, two swimming pools, two tennis courts, a footy oval and a nine-hole golf course.

Vendors Bill and Joan Steains have owned the park for nearly 40 years.