Victoria Uni's city campus being offered for sale
The city campus of Victoria University in central Melbourne is being offered for sale with expectations of $90 million or more, the latest in a series of higher education properties to hit the CBD market.
More than 14,000 sq m in the 21-storey building at 300 Flinders Street is occupied by the university and on the market, after it was snapped up by Singapore-listed Hotel Grand Central for $48.5 million through a sale-and-leaseback deal with Victoria University in 2013.
The rest of the building, a large car park that is not part of the offering, is separately held by private investors who bought it from the Seymour family in a $40 million deal in the same year.
The university has occupied the well-known Flinders Street building since the early 1990s and leases the basement and ground floor along with levels 9 to 18, generating close to $5.2 million in income for its Singaporean owner.
That lease is due to expire in October next year when the university relocates to a newly built $400 million vertical campus on Queen Street, designed by Jackson Architecture and developed by industry fund ISPT.
The building at 300 Flinders Street is opposite the west entrance of the Flinders Street Station in a precinct that will experience significant change as the completion of the $9 billion Melbourne Metro nears.
Lendlease has over-station development rights to construct about 20,000 sq m mixed-use retail and commercial space above the new Town Hall Station on the corner of Flinders Street and Swanston Street.
“Flinders Street Station is the busiest train station in the Melbourne CBD,” said Colliers International agent Matt Stagg, who is the broker for the 300 Flinders Street property along with colleagues Daniel Wolman and Oliver Hay.
“When the Metro Tunnel is completed, this location opposite Flinders Street Station will have the highest concentration of pedestrian foot traffic in the Melbourne CBD and potentially that of any capital city in Australia.”
Victoria University’s plan to move to a new campus was taken well before the disruption brought by COVID-19. However, the upheaval in the higher education sector – following the loss of international students over the past year – has been a factor in two other CBD deals.
This month, Swiss fund manager Fidinam swooped on an office tower in a $40 million deal with Swinburne University, which was keen to bolster its finances by divesting real estate. RMIT University had also followed a similar path, selling a 14-storey CBD property for more than $120 million.
