Australian Education Union Spends $16 Million on Neighbouring Abbotsford Office

THE Victorian Branch of the Australian Education Union, presided by Mary Bluett, may need to rely on fee revenue from government educators to pay off a spectacularly located office building it has purchased on the banks of the Yarra River in Abbotsford – next door to its current HQ.

The AEU’s off-market acquisition comes three years after the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria paid about $6 million for a massive art-deco office complex in Rosslyn Street, West Melbourne, and some two years since the National Union of Workers paid almost $7 million for a Bourke Street, Docklands head office.

The AEU is headquartered at a large building at 112 Trenerry Crescent, and rents out surplus office space. That building could be extended, and the site has redevelopment potential, sources say.

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Century Old Abbotsford School Set to Become Apartments

IT WILL be the end of another era in Abbotsford when apartment builders redevelop the property known for more than a century as the St Joseph’s Technical School.

The prominent site at 73 – 103 Nicholson Street, at the intersection of Mollison and Little Charles streets, has sold for more than $9 million to a developer.

Operating between 1893 and 1990 under the auspice of the Christian Brothers, and more recently as a campus for Steiner school Sofia Mundi, the 4800 square metre inner-city site was offloaded by the Roman Catholic Trust Corporation for the Diocese of Melbourne.

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More Commission Flats for Abbotsford

ANOTHER former commercial building in Abbotsford is being converted into a major residential project.

The former Harold Boot Company factory, at the corner of Gipps and Nicholson streets, is being redeveloped by Common Equity Housing Limited, and the Office of Housing, into a $25 million, five-storey, 59-unit complex.

Twenty five apartments – representing just over 40 per cent of the overall project – will be set aside as public housing, part of the Federal Government’s plan to build 80,000 social and affordable dwellings nationally by 2012.

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