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Expanding his reach: Rino Grollo buys two sites in Mt Hotham lot auction
Rich Lister Rino Grollo, the owner of Victoria’s Mt Buller ski resort, has extended his reach east in Victoria’s Alpine region and purchased his first two lots at Mt Hotham.
Mr Grollo, who with his wife Diana co-owns development company Grollo Group, paid $360,000 for two contiguous lots covering 1100 square metres in an auction of 21 sites by UK theme park operator Merlin Entertainments last week.
The purchase of the two lots, with the potential for up to eight apartments on each, was “a bit of an impulse thing” but was Mr Grollo’s second attempt to buy at Mt Hotham after missing out last year on the chance to buy the 1950 square-metre plot occupied by the Mount Hotham Alpine Resort Management Board office, said Martin Ansell, Grollo Group’s asset development manager.
The auction that sold 17 of the 21 sites, a mixture of freehold and leasehold, saw the freehold sites all sell above reserve, Mr Ansell said.
“They were quite strongly bidded,” he told The Australian Financial Review. “When got to leasehold it wasn’t as much. The price dropped due to the requirements of leases.”
Merlin, the world’s second biggest entertainment group behind Disney, was hoping to generate more than $3 million from selling the sites it acquired when it bought the site from James Packer’s private company Arctic. Arctic had bought it from NAB when Gold Coast financier MFS went into liquidation in 2008.
Selling agent John Castran, who said the freehold sales averaged 15 per cent above reserve, said the buyers were all intending to build on the lots they had purchased.
“They’re not speculators,” Mr Castran said. “The state government, through the resort management board at Hotham are very pleased with the results, which will stimulate building activity over the next two years there.”
Mr Ansell said Mt Buller’s greater proximity to Melbourne made it more sellable than sites at Mt Hotham – 270km away by car – but said that rising prices of new sites at Mt Buller would flow through to Mt Hotham as well.
“I think Hotham won’t be that far behind,” he said.