Cashed up barrister and cattle station owner buys into Lygon Street
Australia’s richest barrister Allan Myers KC has quietly snapped up the ANZ bank branch in Lygon Street down the road from his old university where, until recently, he was a chancellor.
The prominent Western District landholder’s fresh property investment at 205-207 Lygon Street in Carlton was made late last year when he paid $11.42 million in an off-market deal, records show.
Allan Myers at the Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld.Credit: Rebecca Hallas
It’s a long way from Tipperary, the 343,700 hectare cattle station aggregation in the Northern Territory which Myers half-owns.
Most of Myers’ property investments, through the Dunkeld Pastoral Company, are agricultural and centre on the western Victoria town of Dunkeld where he was born.
He owns more than 11,000 hectares of grazing land in the area, as well as the Royal Mail Hotel and its award-winning restaurant.
Myers was chancellor of the University of Melbourne until 2022 and has garnered a fortune estimated to be around $888 million. His new investment is a 639-square-metre, double-storey Victorian building on a 477-square-metre parcel of land.
Caveat on Queen
A 12-storey Queen Street building is back on the market after a $30 million deal failed to settle.
Records show Chinese investor Ming Jiang put a caveat on the former Bank of Singapore House in April 2023.
It was a bumper price for a half-empty B-grade building and suggested a rebound was ahead for the CBD property market.
Cushman & Wakefield agents Daniel Wolman, Oliver Hay, Leon Ma of Cushman & Wakefield have been hired by the vendors, the Scaunich Group, to sell it again.
A 12-floor midtown office building formerly owned by the Bank of Singapore is back on the market.
Records show it was bought in 2006 for $15.05 million. The 4153-square-metre tower is on a 508-square-metre block between Collins and Bourke streets and is expected to sell in the early to mid $20 million range.
Around the corner, the former Saracens Head hotel and McEwans hardware store at 387-391 Bourke Street has finally sold.
It couldn’t find a buyer last year and was slated for an auction in March. Extensive roadworks put the kybosh on the auction and turned it into an expression of interest campaign.
A local private buyer is understood to be paying in the $9 million range. Wolman, Hay and Anthony Kirwan managed the transaction but declined to comment on the buyer and price.
T2 and Rhumbarella’s
A couple of iconic Brunswick Street, Fitzroy addresses – the original homes of the T2 tea shop and Rhumbarella’s cafe – are going to auction next month.
The shops at 340-342 Brunswick Street have been held in the same families since 1976 – well before the strip’s gentrification.
Rhumbarella’s opened at 342 Brunswick Street in 1983, part of a new wave of cafes in Melbourne’s inner suburbs and T2 opened the doors at No.340 in 1996.
Shop fronts at 340-342 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.
T2 still trades at the 260-square-metre, double-storey shop paying $82,396 a year in rent. Blackout Restaurant and Lounge occupies No.342, a 330-square-metre two-level building, returning $98,384 a year. The combined landholding is on 363 square metres of land.
Fitzroys’ Chris Kombi, Ervin Niyaz and Ben Liu are handling the auction and expect about $1.7 million for No.340 and $2 million for No.342.
Highlander news
Highlander Mews, one of the CBD’s first modern-era residential projects, and its neighbour at 490 Flinders Street, are on the market as a 352-square-metre development site.
The Highlander Mews units were completed in 1984, paving the way for CBD living at a time when most residents were living in boarding houses or old warehouses.
1-9 Highlander Lane and 490 Flinders Street.
Marketing for a 24-storey 35-unit project was launched last year but the joint venture behind it - Metier3 architect Andrew Norbury and Singaporean group Havenport Investments - are selling up.
Records show they paid $1.2 million for each of the five three-storey townhouses at 1-9 Highlander Lane and a further $4.21 million for 490 Flinders Street, making their total outlay $10.21 million.
It’s down the road from Highlander Lane’s most famous resident, Captain Peter Janson, who lives in the six-storey Rutherglen House at No.11.
Colliers Matt Stagg, Nick Garoni, Jozef Dickinson and Aaron Choong are running the expressions of interest campaign and are expecting about $12 million.
Spotlight on Chapel
Also giving up on plans for a residential development is the Spotlight Group which is selling one of the last remaining large parcels of land on Chapel Street.
The 3306-square-metre site at 402-416 Chapel Street fronts the high-rise housing commission towers and was razed several years ago to make way for apartments.
It previously held a strip of shops with upper level offices. Records show Spotlight’s owners, the rich-lister Fraid/Fried families, paid a bumper $1.51 million for the building in 1983 when Chapel Street was on the verge of its last great renaissance.
402-416 Chapel Street, South Yarra
It’s close to the Jam Factory development where Newmark Capital and Gurner are planning four towers with heights up to 33 levels – so there’s plenty of upside available.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Hamish Burgess, Marcus Neill, Joe Kairouz, and Leon Ma and Stonebridge Property Group’s Julian White, Andrew Milligan and Chao Zhang have the listing. They declined to provide a price range but a couple of recent deals provide some guidance.
In 2022, Daniel Grollo’s HOME build-to-rent venture paid $37.5 million for the 2069-square-metre ex-Ojay site at 671 Chapel Street site and has since had a 22-storey project approved.
Nearby, the Simonds Group paid $15.7 million for the 817-square-metre Chapel Lane Huts at 430-438 Chapel Street in 2022.
National Archives
Dorman Capital has put the Melbourne home of the National Archives of Australia up for sale, with expectations of around $30 million.
The 6432-square-metre building at 31 Vision Drive, East Burwood, is in the Tally-Ho Business Park and comes with a new five-year lease to the federal agency. The National Archives holds the country’s most valuable historic documents.
31 Vision Drive, East Burwood.
The Dorman family made their money as co-founders of aged care operator Regis Healthcare which listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2014.
CBRE’s Scott Orchard and Tom Ryan, with Gorman Commercial’s Peter Bremner and Jonathan McCormack, are running expressions of interest in the building. Records show Dorman Capital paid $24.25 million for the building in 2015.
Dorman’s managing director Nicholas Dorman said the company is planning to “redirect capital to our development pipeline and other new projects”.
The 6432-square-metre office is on 11,860 square metres of land and returns $2.36 million in rent. Last month, an owner-occupier paid about $17 million for a vacant Tally-Ho building at 12 Lakeside Drive.
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