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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Lang Walker Takes Low Density Road For Last Piece of Kew Cottages Site

BILLIONAIRE businessman Lang Walker has decided against another fight with Kew residents, east of Melbourne.

Announcing the final stage of the $400 million Kew Cottages site redevelopment this month, his company, Walker Corporation, shelved plans for five level apartment complexes capable of including 100 flats, and instead will build eight standalone $2 million homes on the 3240 square metre final portion of land.

 

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Penguin Books Reportedly Moving to Docklands, Melbourne

PENGUIN Books is understood to be in advanced negotiations to lease new offices in Melbourne’s inner west.

Sources say the publisher, which is currently based at 250 Camberwell Road, near the Camberwell Junction, will lease around 8000 square metres at the Kuok-Walker controlled Goods Shed South, in Docklands.

It was just nine years ago the publisher leased 5000 square metres in Camberwell, an office building developed by Morry Schwartz’s Pan Urban on leasehold land owned by the St John’s Anglican Church.

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Marsh Mercer Reportedly Moving to Melbourne’s Docklands

ONE of the year’s biggest inner-city office lease deals is believed to be taking place in Docklands.

Its understood financial services giant Marsh Mercer will relocate from two CBD offices, at 555 Lonsdale Street, and 11 Exhibition Street, and move to a 23,000 square metre high-end office, in a pocket of Docklands controlled by the Kuok Group and Walker Corporation.

Marsh Mercer would be the latest in a string of financial services giants to relocate to Melbourne’s waterfront. ANZ and National Australia Bank are the two biggest tenants in the area.

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