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Capital Gain
The iconic Skipping Girl neon sign in Abbotsford sat down, glued to her phone, last month, part of a health campaign funded by the dairy industry to highlight the dangers of our obsession with technology.
Thankfully, Little Audrey is back to her old tricks and skipping the night away but the 3620 square metre Art Deco office building where she struts her stuff after dark is for sale, completely vacant.
The building at Yarra River at 651 Victoria Street has no tenants. Records show Vantage Property Investments sold it in 2021 to the Singer Property Group for around $25 million.
The city-fringe office market is not what it was in 2021 when it last changed hands and price expectations for the vacant building are now around $20 million.
Singer Property completely refurbished the building which is on a 2931 square metre parcel of land opposite Victoria Gardens shopping centre.
The original Little Audrey was the first animated neon sign in Melbourne and started skipping above a factory at 627 Victoria Street in 1936, advertising Skipping Girl Vinegar.
When the factory relocated to Altona in 1968 there was public outcry at her potential loss but she wasn’t in good shape. A new Audrey was made and shifted to the roof at 651 Victoria Street.
Cushman & Wakefield agents Daniel Wolman, Hamish Burgess and Joe Kairouz have the listing, along with Colliers’ Alex Browne and Ben Baines. They’re pitching it to owner-occupiers or investors with ideas about re-positioning or redevelopment.
Moved to Milan
Investor-developer Danny Schwartz has moved to Milan and is selling a boutique office building he saved from the wreckers. It’s not quite the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II or the office towers of Porta Nuova but the backstreets of Milan have plenty of buildings of a similar size.
The warehouse, on 345 square metres, at 35 Rose Street was stalled in the middle of a residential conversion when Schwartz, brother of Black Inc publisher Morry Schwarz, bought it for $3.04 million in 2019.
Schwartz converted the dilapidated building site into an office building during the pandemic.
Overlooking Garryowen Park at the rear, it is fully leased to Toby’s Estate Coffee Roasters, Clarity Pharmaceuticals, Tennessee-based record label Concord and Switchboard Victoria. The property earns $673,872 a year in rent.
Schwartz’s move to Milan has motivated the rationalisation of his Australian assets.
Stonebridge Property agents Dylan Kilner, Max Warren and Chao Zhang have the listing and are expecting more than $10 million.
Leeka pays Beulah
Still on Rose Street, a Fitzroy development site, quietly offloaded last June by collapsed developer Beulah, is back on the market.
How much Leeka paid for the site at 430-434 George Street, on the corner of Rose Street, is shrouded in mystery – they bought the company which owned the 1238 square metre site rather than the property.
Beulah forked out $12.2 million in 2022. The next transaction might make a bit more if they’re lucky, despite the popularity of Fitzroy’s development site market.
The ambitious Beulah proposed an eight-storey building for the site but failed to get a permit.
Stonebridge’s Julian White and Chao Zhang, who have the listing under instruction from Charter Keck Cramer, declined to comment on a potential price.
It has a new concept plan by Plus Studio for a seven-level apartment building.
Beulah, who was developing Australia’s tallest tower, the $2.7 billion Sthbnk project on City Road, ran into trouble early last year and collapsed, owing $100 million.
The 7706 square metre development site at 118 and 158 City Road is also for sale through Stonebridge and Cushman & Wakefield. The landholding cost Beulah $123.5 million between 2014 and 2017. Apartment buyers are still waiting for either a new developer or their money back.
Wine shop
Around the corner, down Smith Street, the terrace which houses the Blackhearts & Sparrows wine shop is up for sale.
The 550 square metre building is on a large 390 square metre landholding at 123 Smith Street and returns $300,000 a year.
The historic three-storey terrace, part of the Stanford Block built in 1883. Stonebridge agents Nic Hage, Rorey James and Ian Lam are running expressions of interest.
The price is tricky. The Vegie Bar at 380 Brunswick Street fetched $4.2 million on a yield of 5.2 per cent in March. That yield suggests 123 Smith Street could fetch more than $5 million but it has more land. Records show the building last changed hands in 2011 for $2.99 million.
Carpe diem
The Carpe Group has snapped up a South Melbourne development site for around $25 million. The 2432 square metre site at 214-226 Park Street has been owned by the Bailey family for more than 20 years.
The two titles went on the market last year with a price tag of more than $30 million but the development site has been a tough sell and the deal was eventually done off-market.
Colliers’ Jozef Dickinson, Tim Storey, Philip Heberling and Aaron Choong handled the transaction, with more than 10 groups making a play for the property.
The Carpe Group is planning a residential development on the site, which is on the other side of Clarendon Street from where Carpe is building a five-level apartment project at No.219 Park Street.
Locals fought hard to reduce the height of the proposed development, which is opposite the historic Patross Knitting Mills building, but it was approved last July.
Elsewhere in South Melbourne, a joint venture between coffee guru Salvatore Malatesta and United Group’s Rocky Sofo sold a building at 1-5 Yarra Place.
Records show the pair paid $2.57 million for the warehouse in 2011 and is believed to have sold it for $2.95 million.
Union digs
The Rail, Tram, and Bus Industry Union has bought a new office to park its employees.
The RTBU is understood to be paying around $4.5 million for the office building at 11 and 15-19 Gracie Street, North Melbourne.
The 832 square metre office was once part of a larger site, on the market for more than $10 million, hoping to find a developer keen to build in the Arden precinct’s mooted medical hub.
Those plans unravelled after the new underground metro tunnel proved too disruptive for crucial medical instruments and values in the precinct have since tumbled.
CVA agents Matt Knox, Craig McKellar and Ian Angelico got the deal done.
The RTBU’s new office is about a 12-minute walk from the new Arden railway station, unlike its old digs at 365 Queen Street, on the edge of the Queen Victoria market, where trams, buses and trains run close by.
The union paid $1.4 million for its 579 square metre level two office at ACTU House in 2006 when the ACTU and a string of unions bought most of the strata floors in the nine-level building.
Last year, ACTU Property paid the Communications Workers Union $3.85 million for the level 9 penthouse office.
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