Tomasetti House for sale again
Postscript: in April, 2021, this building sold for a speculated price of just over $40m, to Justin Hemmes‘ Merivale. Read about that by following this link.
After six years, Wake Up! Properties has listed Melbourne distinctive Tomasetti House.
The Sydney vendor paid education entrepreneur Shesh Ghale $16.2 million for the seven storey brick and bluestone office at 277-279 Flinders Lane.
At the time, it was speculated the property would be converted into a high-end backpacker hostel.
Instead it has been retained as an investment.
Wake Up! Properties is controlled by Millett Nominees’ directors Margaret and Warren Millett.
In 2015 the owners’ hospitality enterprise, Millett Group, fit out the basement as a bar, The Mill House.
The asset has a 24-hour trading licence and is also 9b compliant, which allows it to be used as a school.
With 3814 square metres of lettable area, the 600 sqm site is adjacent to Degraves Street, a popular café-themed laneway (story continues below).
Tomasetti House should sell for c$25 million.
As well as investors, the asset could attract owner occupiers – last April, Swinburne University paid $44m for the nearby seven-level Invicta House, on 742 sqm.
Tomasetti House: 277-279 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Known from 1899 as the Oriental Building, 277-279 Flinders Ln was developed from 1853 by William Degraves for his flour milling and merchant business.
It was five levels at the time – making it one of Melbourne’s tallest buildings, according to the Heritage Council of Victoria.
“The façade is divided vertically into three bays, with a large base section, a vertical central section and an attic floor,” it said.
“The most distinctive elements are the row of three massive horse-shoe arches on the ground floor, which give it an Arabic flavour, further emphasised by the banding of render and red brick in the four major vertical piers…and octagonal terminating turrets.
“Architecturally, the former Oriental building is notable as one of the most distinctive and unusual of the Ewardian era ‘tall-arched, red-brick’ buildings in the city area”.
