Jaques Richmond Site Ready to be Developed

IT was rightly marketed as one of Richmond’s last major development sites, when it hit the market in late 1990s.

And now, the one hectare former Jaques industrial facility, occupying an “island site” bound by four streets – is ready to be redeveloped into an apartment based project.

Marketing boards have been erected around the property directing prospective purchasers to a website, where Melbourne Real Estate is accepting registrations of interest for the first dwellings in the new major complex.

Approval is imminent, sources say, and is expected to add hundreds of residents to a block between Highett, Coppin, Palmer and Griffiths streets.

Jaques made rock crushing machines at the Richmond site, which it expanded by offering the owners of surrounding work cottages a job for life, as well as market price for their homes.

The former industrial site sold in 1997, to private property investor Clement Lee who outmuscled heavyweights Becton, Central Equity, MAB Corporation, Mirvac and Walker Corporation by paying $6.13 million.

In a show of how fast commercial property values have moved in the last 13 years, sources estimate the property, which Mr Lee onsold, would be worth between $50 million and $60 million, were it put to the market today.