ISPT sells ex-Waltons department store
ISPT is taking a hit selling a retail investment in Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall after nearly 10 years.
The six level former Waltons department store on 3157 square metres at 206 Bourke Street, also exposed to Little Bourke St and Chinatown, is trading for $80.1 million – a fully let net yield of 7.5 per cent.
The buyer is a China-based private investor.
Three of the four highest offers were from Asia based groups, added marketing agents, JLL’s Stuart Taylor, Josh Rutman and MingXuan Li with Cushman & Wakefield’s Oliver Hay, Daniel Wolman and Leon Ma.
Five of the six best bids were from private capital, they said.
Bourke Street Mall and Chinatown exposure
Developed in 1965 as a Waltons department store, 206 Bourke Street was for two decades until 2005 known as the Village City Centre, and owned by Village Roadshow Asset Management.
Challenger, which acquired VRAM in 1999, sold the building to Cromwell for $31.9m in 2004.
That seller flipped it three years later for $34.3m to Les Smith and Macquarie, which repurposed the 11,933 sqm of area – highly exposed to Chinatown – as a retail-based mixed use complex (about a fifth is offices).
Singapore’s Hiap Hoe bought it in late 2013, for $105m.
ISPT paid it $116.3m two years later.
Ex-Village City Centre sells again
JB Hi Fi, Holmesglen Institute and Victoria Police are amongst 206 Bourke Street’s highest profile occupiers, as is Michelin-starred restaurant Tim Ho Wan.
“Positioned between Bourke Street Mall and Chinatown, the site benefits from dual high exposure frontages and access to one of Australia’s largest and fastest growing catchments,” Mr Taylor said.
Mr Hay added the property has development upside.
“The site holds prior…approval for a rooftop bar and entertainment venue along with a nine storey hotel above the existing retail,” according to the executive.
“That scope for development combined with its core CBD location makes it a future-facing investment with multiple pathways to value creation,” he said.
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