Myer Building Part of CBD Sales Flurry
Melbourne’s CBD has seen a flurry of major retail sales, headlined by ASX-listed pair Charter Hall and Abacus Property Group sealing their acquisitions of 1/3 stakes in the Myer flagship building on Bourke Street for $135.2 million each.
They acquired the combined 2/3 stake from Nuveen Real Estate and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC Real Estate in a $270.4 million deal. The remaining share is held by Vicinity Centres, which also owns the Melbourne Emporium in the CBD, and co-owns Chadstone Shopping Centre.
The 9-level Myer building, at 314-336 Bourke Street & 315-321 Little Bourke Street, has more than 40,000sqm of floor space and sold with 10.5 years remaining on its lease to the department store.
The neighbouring David Jones menswear store at 299 Bourke Street sold to Newmark Capital for $121 million late last year. David Jones will move the offering to its major store across the road in the coming years, and Newmark plans to refurbish the retail and office levels of the 6-storey building.
In the Paris End of the CBD, listed Malaysian investor and luxury retailer The Hour Glass paid around $35 million for the Balenciaga flagship store at 181 Collins Street, on a 4% yield.
The 536sqm shop and basement was home to the Ralph Lauren flagship for 20 years before Balenciaga took a 10-year lease and opened in late 2019. The Smorgon family’s VBS Investments had bought the property in 2000 for $4.25 million.
The Hour Glass had bought the Louis Vuitton-occupied 139 Collins Street last year for $68 million. The fully-leased, 1,633sqm 4-storey building has Louis Vuitton on the ground and 1st floors on a lease running to 2026, with office tenants above that include lawyers and financial advisors.
The Hour Glass retails high-end brands such as Rolex, Jaeger-LeCoultreand Patek Philippe, and has a real estate portfolio that includes other assets in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Singapore and throughout Asia. It recently renovated its premises at 252 Collins Street, which it bought in 2002.
Eureka Skydeck Nets $60m
A syndicate of buyers put together by Sydney-based fund manager CorVal has swooped on the top 2 levels of the Eureka Tower – occupied by the Skydeck observation point and restaurant Eureka89 – paying $60 million for the strata assets.
Levels 88 and 89 were sold by tourism and hospitality operator Journey Beyond, which operates the Eureka Skydeck and high-end restaurant and will continue to operate the businesses under a 20-year leaseback agreement that returns $3.3 million pa in rent with fixed annual increases.
Journey Beyond also operates tourism ventures The Ghan, Indian Pacific, Outback Spirit Tours and Horizontal Falls Seaplane Adventures.
ABC Studios Site to Join Elsternwick Developments Queue
The ABC’s Elsternwick studios, where the famed music program Countdown was recorded, has sold to a developer for around $30 million.
Zoned Residential Growth 1, the 11,740sqm site at 8 Gordon Street was decommissioned by the ABC in 2017 as it relocated to Southbank. The ABC offloaded its other Elsternwick studios site, at 10 Selwyn Street, to Woolworths for almost $50 million around the same time.
The Gordon Street site was also the filming location for Frontline, Kath and Kim, Sea Change and Spicks and Specks. The studios were built between 1956 and 1965 and have a heritage overlay. They are next to the Rippon Lea Estate, and close to the Glen Huntly Road shopping strip and Elsternwick train station. It is expected that apartments will be built on the site.
Pitard Group is constructing a new tower close by at 233-247 Glen Huntly Road that will have 99 apartments, a few doors from Lechte Corporation’s 10-level, 83-apartment building.
Meanwhile, Woolworths has submitted redrawn plans for 10 Selwyn Street, comprising towers of 10 and 9 levels with 154 apartments, a supermarket and café, and a near-1,000sqm Jewish community arts space. Across the road at 7 Selwyn Street is the proposed site of the Jewish Arts Quarter building.
Disclosure: The weekly Fitzroys Property Wrap is for information only on transactions in the Melbourne property market. Fitzroys provides this information as a public service. We are not purporting that all sales and leases within this report were transacted by Fitzroys. Terms/Privacy © Copyright 2021 Fitzroys.