LOCAL developers are believed to have paid about $20 million for an inner-city business park near the riverfront suburb border of Richmond and South Yarra.

Sources say prominent Richmond investors Michael Gannon and Gus Cooper have purchased the Maple Close complex, at 650 Church Street, from another private investor.

Currently configured as six low-rise buildings with a combined net lettable area of 6600 square metres, the complex is considered under-developed by today’s standards – especially seeing it has four street frontages.

IN PEAK hour, in a car and behind the crammed trams – the retail strip that is Victoria Street, where Richmond meets Abbotsford can be one of the most congested roads in Melbourne to drive through.

And traffic is expected to move a bit slower in coming years, as more residents move to Victoria Street, in complexes being developed on the former Going Going Gone site, the Honeywell office site, and another property opposite the Victoria Gardens Shopping Centre, on the south-west corner of Burnley Street.

RICHMOND’s former Fields Knitting Mills factory, in Lord Street, Melbourne, is set to be redeveloped into a $60 million, six-level apartment complex.

Developer W Property Group said 85 per cent of the 88 units available in the Cirque complex have sold – enough to satisfy the bank’s tight funding requirements, and get construction started by July.

Oliver Hume Real Estate marketing agent Cameron Clarke said the oversized apartment shells were a contributing factor to Cirque’s success.

KEEPING it in the AFL family, a company chaired by former Melbourne Football Club president Paul Gardner has leased offices at a Richmond project being developed by the current president of the Geelong Football Club, Frank Costa.

Financial services group Grey Australia New Zealand, of which Mr Gardner is an executive, will lease 940 square metres, being the entire second level, at Mr Costa’s 4 – 12 Amsterdam Street development, at the Cremorne end of the trendy inner-city suburb.

Market rents at the new three-storey building are between $300 and $320 per square metre, per annum.

CONSTRUCTION of a new apartment tower at the busy intersection of Burnley and Victoria streets, in Richmond, is set to start this year, after developer Salta achieved enough apartment pre-sales to get its $100 million aplacetolive project out of the ground.

Marketing of Sienna, the second of four apartment building within the aplacetolive project, is now underway. Almost all of the 88 units in the first building, Jade, have sold.

PLANS to redevelop Richmond's outgoing Dimmeys store into two apartment buildings, rising eight and 11 stories, have been critised by locals.

The new proposal, which replaces one last year whereby just a nine level building would be developed on the site, has been lodged by Richmond Icon, a development company associated with Melbourne's wealthy Liberman family.

Richmond Icon paid Dimmeys $16 million for the outgoing site in 2008.

INDUSTRY Superannuation Property Trust has made $16.75 million from the sale of a prominent office building in Melbourne's inner eastern suburb of Richmond.

The building at Lot 1, 658 Church Street sits on a 7,064 square metre site, and was sold with a permit for a 20,000 square metre office.

The office was purchased by a consortium headed by Bill Boerkamp, according to today's AFR.

SALTA Properties is looking to develop one of the several properties it owns around the busy corner of Victoria and Burnley streets, at the suburb border of Richmond and Abbotsford.
 
The Yarra City Council has granted Salta approval to build a $100 million apartment and townhouse project between 10 – 30 Burnley Street Richmond, and opposite the Burnley Street entrance of the Victoria Gardens Shopping Centre, which Salta owns with Centro Properties Group.
 
The aplacetolive.com.au development will include 355 apartments across a suite of individual buildings with distinct identities: Jade at 10 Burnley Street, Ruby at 20 Burnley Street, Ivory at 28 Burnley Street and Sienna at 30 Burnley Street. 

An undisclosed private investor has paid $3.1 million for a showroom and office building with redevelopment potential in Swan Street Richmond.

A syndicate of private investors said to include former Collingwood footballer Damian Monkhorst is believed to have paid $12.5 million for the former Coogi Knitwear factory at 49 - 65 Coppin Street in Richmond in an off-market deal.

Investa is believed to be formalising a deal to buy the last two development sites at the Botanicca Corporate Park in Richmond.