Universal makes tactical Avalon play
Andrew Sirianni’s Universal Corporation has picked up a major Avalon farm which has been on and off the market for five years.
The 141.36 hectare block, 15 Avalon Road, beside Avalon Airport and with two kilometre frontage to a busy Princes Freeway diamond interchange, is speculated to be costing $85 million ex-GST.
It previously traded for $4.1m in 2012.
The parcel has long been earmarked for a Commercial 2 rezone, as part of a master-plan to replace farms around Lindsay Fox’s Avalon Airport with an employment zone.
MAB Corporation holds 780ha in the suburb for a commercial project.
In 2020, Pelligra acquired a 98ha Avalon site, part of which includes a fish farm, also with long-term industrial development upside.
Avalon gets busy
About 20 kilometres north east of Geelong, Avalon is part of the Greater Geelong council area.
Avalon Airport has increasingly become mainstream since 2004 when Jetstar began using it.
Three years ago, the facility opened its first international terminal, for Malaysia’s AirAsia X (story continues below).
Knight Frank’s Stephen Kelly, James Thorpe, Michael Satterley and Andrew Galluci marketed 15 Avalon Rd.
Business park planned
The Avalon Rd property is about a 45 minute drive from each of the Port of Melbourne, Melbourne Airport, Essendon Airport and Melbourne CBD.
Some 30,000 vehicles a day pass its Princes Fwy boundary.
Universal is expected to develop a logistics park – capitalising on the area’s position in the market as a cheaper alternative to Melbourne’s most affordable industrial markets, including Cobblebank.
In the CBD, Mr Sirianni, the son of company founder Aldo, holds strata investments on Market St, where the group is also headquartered.
The group’s local commercial development pipeline includes two major Epping projects.
Universal also builds housing estates, with communities at Broadmeadows, Mernda, South Morang and Woodstock – in the city’s north – and at Fraser Rise, formerly part of Plumpton, west of town.
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