Planning Minister Justin Madden Approves Massive Upper West Side Project

HONG Kong based developer Far East Consortium is ready to redevelop one of the Melbourne CBD’s biggest remaining development sites.

Planning Minister Justin Madden this week approved the construction of a $1 billion-plus, multi-skyscraper compound, to replace the notorious eyesore known between 1950 and 2008 as the Lonsdale Street power station, at the Docklands-CBD suburb border, opposite the Southern Cross train station.

The Upper West Side complex, as it has been marketed, will include four major skyscrapers between 31 and 50 levels – linked by a one hectare podium rooftop garden – with a veggie patch and children’s play area. Retail will flank the ground levels.

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Cheltenham Office Sells For $15 Million

ONE of Cheltenham’s biggest office buildings, in a convenient location next door to the massive Westfield Southland shopping centre, has sold for about $15 million to a private investor.

Sydney-based syndicate GDI has offloaded the 4 – 10 Jamieson Street office it purchased for $13.5 million about three years ago.

The 5792 square metre building was one of several assets offloaded in 2007 by Henkell Brothers Investment Management, at what is now considered the peak of that property cycle.

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Breathing New Life Into Melbourne’s Landmark Sites

Pentridge Prison, CoburgTHIRTY years ago a three-bedroom house in Thomastown cost more than a three-bedroom house in Fitzroy – that’s testament to how much Melbourne’s attitude to housing has changed.

In the 1970s, to live in Collingwood, Port Melbourne or Yarraville meant to be entrenched in Melbourne’s working class. Houses could languish on the market for months – unsellable, unrentable and not worth fixing up.

Today, to own properties in these and many other particularly inner-city suburbs, is to own the real estate equivalent of a gold mine. Since the 1980s, but especially since the turn of this century, where and how Melburnians want to live has shifted and many disused, derelict but once significant sites have been redeveloped. We look at some of the biggest:

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New Expo Technique Used to Market Commercial Property

A NEAR new government-leased office building in central Bendigo and a shopping centre in West Geelong are amongst the assets for sale at a commercial property “expo”, underway at Southbank’s Langham Hotel.
 
The sale technique, which co-ordinator Knight Frank says is the first of its scale in Australia, exhibits about 150 properties – mostly shops, offices, factories and development sites worth less than $10 million.

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Forecast for 2008 Commercial Property Market: Expect a Dip, Then Gains

The roaring pace with which the commercial property markets developed momentum in the final months of 2007, has come to a grinding halt, as the full effects of interest rate rises, share market volatility and a dip in business and consumer sentiment takes its toll on a stunned market.

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