Historic four-storey former factory up for grabs

JLL’s Josh Rutman, Nick Peden, Tim Carr and MingXuan Li, together with Vinci Carbone’s Frank Vinci and Joseph Carbone, are marketing the property, which is expected to sell for more than $23 million – not exactly a great return on the investment.

Some basic refurbishment work, including new lifts, has been carried out in the building.

The historic, four-storey factory was built in 1927 but was turned into an open-plan office in the late 1980s by veteran property developer and publisher Morry Schwartz.

The property has 1063 square metre floor plates and is on a 4389 sq m site at 112 Trenerry Crescent, and is one of a handful of offices in a curved strip along the Yarra before the road dips under the Eastern Freeway and emerges in Clifton Hill. It also has 140 underground car spaces, with trains and buses nearby.

Down the road, the Alter family paid $41 million for 64-78 Trenerry Crescent in 2019 and Abacus paid $93.5 million for Computershare’s Yarra Mills headquarters in 2018.

Collins Street

The first CBD listings for 2023 has seen interest in the city market spring back to life, with blue-chip retail space near a Collins Street tower on the market.

The 867 sq m space, at 239 Collins Street – in the heart of the city’s luxury shopping precinct – is expected to fetch more than $25 million.

The older-style building adjoins The Collins tower at No. 233, and includes five shops on Collins Street and Manchester Lane. It is anchored by optometrist chain OPSM and returns net passing income of about $1 million a year.

Colliers agents Matt Stagg and Tim McIntosh are running the campaign.

Also in the CBD, a shop leased to an EzyMart outlet at 660 Bourke Street, at the Southern Cross end of the city, is up for auction. It comes with two car parks and an income of $155,900 a year.

The 92 sq m shop is being sold on March 16 through Stonebridge agents Max Warren, Dylan Kilner and Shawn Luo and JLL’s Tim Carr, Nick Peden, Josh Rutman and MingXuan Li. It is tipped to fetch more than $3 million.

Heritage opposition

Proximity to one of the city’s earliest grand homes has quashed plans to build a nine-level apartment building on Wellington Parade, East Melbourne.

The directors of listed company PSC Insurance took their planning application for 96 Wellington Parade to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, but members ruled it could prove “catastrophic” to the neighbouring Elizabeth House – a two-storey Italianate-style historic mansion – and its garden.

Records show PSC Property Holdings bought the existing five-level office building from the Roman Catholic Trusts Corp., for the Diocese of Melbourne, in 2016, paying $10.48 million.

PSC put it up for sale in 2019 as a leaseback proposition but, evidently, it remained unsold.

Melbourne-born comedian Barry Humphries once described the Brutalist-architecture style office as the city’s “ugliest building”. Its glamorous historic neighbour, at 86-92 Wellington Parade, is one of few remaining early houses built outside the CBD. It is listed as “significant” by Heritage Victoria.

According to the East Melbourne Historical Society, the 11-room mansion was constructed in 1855 for JD Pinnock, who arrived in Port Phillip (as Melbourne was then known) in 1841.

One of the objectors to the proposed development was Elizabeth House’s owner, philanthropist Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, who bought the property about 35 years ago from another arm of the Catholic Church.

VCAT members said the developer did not make its case to justify exceeding the 24 metre height limit in the area, and stated: “New developments adjacent to heritage places [must] be respectful of those places”.

The east-facing wall of the proposed building, which would have overlooked Elizabeth House, included plans for six contrasting materials – “too many in a historic context,” VCAT concluded.

Villages demand

Neighbourhood shopping centres and supermarkets are a hot asset class for investors. MPG Funds Management is hoping to cash-in on the demand by offloading the Village Lakeside shopping centre, in Pakenham, from its MPG Retail Brands Property Trust.

The 3654 sq m centre is anchored by a Coles supermarket and 10 shops on a large 11,220 sq m parcel of land, with 180 carparks. It is in a busy retail strip neighbouring an Aldi, Dan Murphy’s, Bunnings, Officeworks and HomeCo Pakenham, and returns $1.35 million a year in rent.

JLL agents Stuart Taylor, Tom Noonan and MingXuan Li have the listing at 9 Lakeside Boulevard and are anticipating a mid-$20 million range sale price.

Meanwhile, in the city’s north-west, a 1604 sq m Aldi supermarket in the Gladstone Park shopping centre is also on the market.

The property at 8-34 Gladstone Park Drive comes with a 10-year lease to the German supermarket chain and is expected to fetch more than $5 million. Fitzroys’ Chris Kombi, Ervin Niyaz and Ben Liu are marketing the property.

In other recent retail deals, Coles’ development business sold its Toowoomba supermarket and bottle shop to a Melbourne investor for $27.4 million, and HomeCo sold Epping Hub to Forza Capital for $70.25 million on a 4.7 per cent yield.

Bulk action

A Ferntree Gully Mazda service centre designed and built by Italian concreting pioneer Rinaldo Fabbro sold at a Burgess Rawson bulk auction this week.

The 1054 sq m building, at 1020 Burwood Highway, fetched $3.8 million on a comfortable 5.4 per cent yield.

Eleven properties went to auction on Wednesday, selling for a total $30.6 million – an average yield of 5.49 per cent. It followed an auction of 10 properties in Sydney on Tuesday that fetched $35 million.

Burgess Rawson chief executive Ingrid Filmer said the results show demand for commercial property remains strong, despite rising interest rates and surging inflation.

“This result shows despite market headwinds, investors are seeking certainty in bricks and mortar. We witnessed spirited bidding across the board, particularly for childcare, fuel and fast food,” Filmer said.