Coles digs deep for growth corridor site
EXCLUSIVE
Coles Group Property Developments has quietly snapped up a major west Melbourne site zoned in two parts: Town Centre and Residential.
In a deal settling last June, the retailer paid $33 million for the 17.14 hectare block, 490-528 Coburns Road, Kurunjang, opposite Crest Property Group’s Willandra housing estate, part of the Melton growth corridor.
The seller, Westlake Developments Pty Ltd, outlaid $500,000 in January, 1989.
Encouraging medium and high density dwellings, retail and community space, the land, near the south east corner of Minns Rd, is affected by the Melton North Precinct Structure Plan, approved 14 years ago.
Coles buys, sells in Melton
CBRE’s Paul Wheate with Biggin & Scott Land’s Andrew Egan brokered the off-market Coburns Rd deal.
Coles picked it up at about the same time it banked c$45m from the recently completed Cobblebank Village, on 2.09ha, nearby (story continues below).
Also last year the retailer paid $17.2m – a 2.7per cent passing yield – for a Hampton supermarket it occupied for decades.
In Balaclava meanwhile, it outlaid a speculated c$100 for another store it rented and neighbouring properties; the supermarket component of that deal was speculated to have been sealed on a sub two per cent return – a national record low for an asset of this type.
Like Hampton, that property holds significant airspace development upside.
Outside of Victoria, this week, Coles sold the Huntlee Shopping Centre, on 2.3ha in Branxton, 55 kilometres north west of Newcastle, to a NSW private investor for $33m.
That asset, like Cobblebank, came with a part leaseback.
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