Woolworths buys ABC's Elsternwick studio for about $45m
The ABC has sold its Selwyn Street studio in Bayside Melbourne’s Elsternwick to Woolworths for about $45 million, with comedian Charlie Pickering making way for a supermarket.
A transfer to the ABC’s Southbank studio in central Melbourne was always on the cards for shows such as The Weekly and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell after the national broadcaster put the 6155-square-metre site up for sale last year.
Woolworths-owned Fabcot placed a caveat on the site earlier this month, official records show.
Staff will begin moving next month from the site that lies 100 metres from Elsternwick train station and will vacate the facilities – also the site of former music show Countdown – by the end of June.
The heritage-listed former Elsternwick fire station forms part of the ABC site purchased by Woolworths. Photo: Teagan Glenane
“The ABC has successfully completed the tender process for the sale of its Selwyn Street, Elsternwick facility,” a spokesman said.
”The sale is a key component of a long-term strategy to integrate all of the ABC Melbourne’s operations at its Southbank headquarters to create a greater level of connectivity and efficiency.”
The Elsternwick site sits a row behind the main retail precinct on Glen Huntly Road in the inner southeastern suburb. The precinct has a Coles, but no Woolworths.
Savills selling agent Clinton Baxter, who marketed the property with colleagues Nick Peden and Jesse Radisich, declined to comment.
The sale of the site, zoned for mixed-used development and which occupies six titles, will be followed by the sale this year of the ABC’s smaller Ripponlea Gordon Street production offices nearby, which serviced the larger studio, the spokesman said.
Apart from studios, the Selwyn Street property comprises two-level office, warehouses and two-level car park. One part of the site, the former Elsternwick Fire Station, is heritage listed.
