Devitt family list Kew Corporate Centre
The Kew Corporate Centre, an office investment with development upside, has been listed for sale.
The Kew East complex at 830-832 High Street and 1401 High Street – about eight kilometres east of the Melbourne CBD – is expected to trade for close to $20 million.
It is being offloaded by the Devitt family, part owners of construction firm LU Simon.
In recent years, LU Simon managing director Peter Devitt has made headlines because of his residential properties, past and present:
- The historic Idylwilde at 16 St Georges Road, Toorak, which Mr Devitt sold to Xiayan “Kylie” Bao for $18.5 million in 2013, was controversially demolished two years later;
- Another former Devitt home, Highlands, at 112-116 Lum Road, Wheelers Hill, was also facing demolition, in 2017; and
- In 2015, Mr Devitt paid Origin Healthcare founder Bob Biddle $15 million for a penthouse within Mirvac’s Melburnian complex at 250 St Kilda Road, reportedly as a gift for his wife, Jo.
Two months ago, LU Simon was ordered to pay $5.7 million to owners of the Lacrosse apartment building, in Docklands: a fine following a high-profile cladding fire in 2014.
Knight Frank’s Tim Grant, Tom Ryan, Tom Zhou and Paul Henley are marketing the Kew Corporate Centre.
The asset includes 111 car parks and four buildings with a lettable area of 3520 square metres, and returns $823,745 in annual rent.
The brokers are promoting the 4864 sqm block’s potential to make way for an apartment complex or hotel.
Strata-titling the existing office space, then selling it down, is also an option.
Several sites have sold near the Kew Junction, which is in Kew, about a kilometre closer to the Melbourne CBD than the Kew Corporate Centre.
In April, it was speculated that syndicator Terraplex was paying $19 million for 79-83 High Street (an office which has already been subdivided into 19 suites).
A month earlier, residential developer Prince Corporation paid a speculated price close to $5 million for 1 Studley Park Road – a historic single-storey terrace offered permit-ready for a nine-storey apartment building.
