FABRIC store retailer Lincraft has paid $6.5 million for an office warehouse building at Derrimut’s Gilbertson Industrial Estate.

The 2.53 hectare site at 60 Fulton Drive includes a 9114 square metre office warehouse, and was sold with a short term lease to distribution company Axima.

Lincraft, which was in receivership just six years ago, before being bought out, will owner occupy the western suburb site, ending a search that saw it hem office warehouse all around metropolitan Melbourne.

“It’s been many years since a property of this quality was offered for sale to an owner occupier within the Gilbertson Estate,” said Colliers International agent Nathan Bingham, who sold the site with Tony Iuliano.

SEVEN months after paying the Church of Scientology $8.5 million for its long-time, outgoing, Melbourne CBD headquarters, Melbourne developer David Marriner has proposed a glass, 25-level hotel.

The proposed development will retain the historic building (right) at the corner of Exhibition and Little Collins street. The building will be reconfigured as retail and strata office space.

Atop the historic building, separate by stilts (not unlike a proposed building above the former Le Louvre boutique nearby), a large scale skyscraper will be developed.

Stockland is paying $300 million for a 1,121 hectare Melbourne development – understood to be Australia’s largest individual land transaction.

Racehorse owner and tuna farmer Tony Santic is offloading a 1725 hectare lifestyle property at Gnarwarre, west of Geelong. Roxby

VICTORIAN Planning Minister Justin Madden has approved a planning permit and rezoning of Campbellfield’s Pipeworks Market, paving the way for Swedish furniture giant IKEA to open a new store there.

The 41,000 square metre IKEA store will be the group’s biggest in Australia. It will replace Pipeworks address at 400 Mahoneys Road.

In Melbourne, IKEA also trades from Victoria Gardens in Richmond, and is building another store in Springvale, near a new, large Harvey Norman store.

Clement Lee has paid an as-yet-undisclosed sum for a riverside piece of the city. It is the second deal with

SYDNEY based developer Lend Lease is set to develop a strata office building in Melbourne’s Docklands.

The $70 million project – Lifestyle Working Collins Street – will measure 9500 square metres and include 137 suites ranging in size between 48 and 123 square metres.

The complex, with a street address of 838 Collins Street, will include shared meeting spaces for occupants to share.

Bettina Liano is selling in South Yarra after two and a half years. The designer and entrepreneur’s 48 Kensington Road

Don Ravida is selling a new build at 8 Maxwell Court, Toorak. The four bedroom residence, which his building company

A CONSORTIUM which retained a swag of apartments and townhouses built within the walls and around the garden of Portsea’s landmark Delgany estate, has put that portfolio on the market.

The distinctive limestone mansion on the non-beach side of Point Nepean Road was developed in 1923 by architect Harold Desbrowe Annear, as a holiday house for western district farmer Harold Armytage – whose other property included South Yarra’s Como mansion.

Delgany was converted into a luxury restaurant and hotel before being sold to developers for $10 million in 2003, who built flats within the historic home, and townhouses around the three hectare garden.

The National Museum and State Library could be overshadowed by a 36-level skyscraper. Melbourne City Council is reviewing an application

LEXUS of Blackburn – whose radio advertisements wake tens of thousands of Victorians ahead of 3AW’s popular Rumour File – has itself settled speculation it has made a major property play.

The prestige car dealership is understood to have paid about $12 million for News Limited’s former Leader Newspaper facility at 160 Whitehorse Road, near its existing facility at 146 Whitehorse Road.

Lexus will develop an iconic, new car facility on the site at the corner of Railway Road and near the Blackburn train station – set to highlight the brand’s environmental credentials.

Mirvac will launch its sixth Docklands skyscraper – Yarra Point – in October. The group will adopt a similar design

South Melbourne’s next skyscraper is set to rise from the former headquarters of radio stations 3AW693 and Magic1278. Kingsford Property

Another winter and another coastal caravan park has sold to a builder. This time on the Mornington Peninsula, Flinders Caravan

Model turned restaurateur Janni Goss is selling a high-profile shop in Carlton North’s Rathdowne Village. The vendor can expect $2.7

Melbourne Victory senior executive Richard Wilson is understood to have quietly sold one of Hawthorn’s most exclusive homes for about

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.

RECEIVERS for the Letten Group have recovered $13.31 million from the sale of a historic Flinders Lane office and retail building.

Savills agents Clinton Baxter and Nick Peden sold 167 – 173 Flinders Lane at auction yesterday, in front of a crowd of some 250 people.

The property, on the south-west corner of Hosier Lane, was previously controlled by Mark Letten and celebrity health expert Dr John Tickel, who paid $3.67 million for the asset in September 2001.

The Church of Scientology has offloaded a Melbourne CBD building it bought for $720,000 in 1980 as its headquarters. The

Twenty years since music promoter Glenn Wheatley and then brother-in-law, Richmond Football Club president Clinton Casey sold the Ivy nightclub,

Residents in Australand’s high-end Freshwater Place might have their million dollar views blocked, with developer Tony Schiavello picking up the

Another historic regional Victorian pub is for sale. The former Shepparton Hotel, which was part destroyed by fire in late

Woolworths, which buys, sells, develops and holds real estate, said it is “ready and raring to go” with plans to

St Andrews Beach Golf Course and Resort will be auctioned after failing to sell during the economic downturn. Up for

A Toorak apartment proposal the features of a six-star hotel, including a live-in concierge, has been abandoned. Businessman Rodney Smorgon

The days of spotting Australian Open competitors shopping around Ormond Road Elwood, Glenferrie Road Hawthorn or in Toorak Village, are

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.

HAVING reported a strong six-month profit of $51.5 million last week, Flight Centre Limited has confirmed it will hold onto a St Kilda Road office it purchased at the peak of the commercial property boom in 2007, and then renovated.

Flight Centre Limited’s Haydn Long confirmed the group will retain the 11-level office it occupies and leases to tenants, at 436 St Kilda Road.

The building was put to the market last April with a price tag of between $25 million and $30 million, and after the economic downturn had grounded property markets.

ONE of four penthouses in the prominent Hallmark building, opposite the Shrine of Remembrance, has sold for $2.3 million. The

Plans to build two apartment towers, of eight and 11 storeys, at Richmond’s outgoing Dimmeys store have unveiled. The proposal

The Australian Open will stay in Melbourne until at least 2036, after the state government announced a $363 million upgrade

IT may have taken 23 years, but Barristers Chambers Limited has finally got its hands back on a prominent CBD property at the centre of Melbourne’s court precinct.
 
BCL, which is owned by the Victorian Bar Council, has paid $54 million, plus GST, for the Owen Dixon Chambers West office building at 525 Lonsdale Street, which it has occupied since 1986.
 
The purchase marks the end of a tumultuous 30-year association between the site, and BCL, which amongst other things, aims to provide members of the Bar with accommodation in close proximity to the Courts.