Victoria

BOURKE Street’s prominent former Emporio Shoes building has hit the rental market.

The 97-year old four-level retail premises, formerly known as the Francis & Co building at 280 – 282 Bourke Street, includes 74 square metres of ground floor space, and another 465 square metres in the basement and on upper levels.

Emporio shoes traded from the building (formerly occupied by the Body Shop) for about fifteen years until its parent company, the Figgins Group, went into administration in 2009.

VICTORIAN Planning Minister Justin Madden is “expected to face a grilling” at this month’s parliamentary inquiry into corruption in the planning system.

The Labor Party is in damage control, and its credibility under serious question, after a senior media adviser sent an email which proposed using a public consultation, as grounds to knock back plans for a 25-level tower behind the Windsor Hotel, the fate of which may have already been decided.

The final decision about the project rests with Justin Madden, and the email was meant for him.

YARRAWONGA’s prominent Pigdon Motors site may be redeveloped into a relatively major shopping centre with a speculated end value of about $20 million.

The Moira Shire Council is reviewing an application to develop a 3,500 square metre supermarket, which would be leased to Woolworths, and 11 specialty shops, totaling 1170 square metres, on the site at the southern edge of the town centre.

Planning Minister Justin Madden recently approved an amendment to a planning scheme, allowing land to be rezoned to commercial use, in keeping with the Yarrawonga Strategy – 2005.

FIVE years since it was first listed for sale, the owner of South Yarra’s reportedly largest – and arguably one of its most prominent - residential land holdings, is seeking a permit to build apartments.

If approved, a major complex rising five levels above a garage, and containing 12 apartments and 28 car spaces will replace the distinctive Saint Cloud estate, at a bluff at the top of  tree-lined Kensington Road, and sloping down to Alexandra Avenue and the Yarra River.

The 5600 square metre site currently includes a 929 square metre, semi-circle, white mansion, built about 20 years ago, and visible from the Monash Freeway near Gunn Island.