This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
DEVELOPER V-Leader has backed out of its plans for a valuable Collingwood parcel of land, opting to take the corner property to market as Melbourne’s newest city fringe market takes shape.
The rectangular corner site of 4,264 sqm at 128-144 Wellington St has commercial 2 zoning and an existing warehouse building.
Existing schemes for the site provide multiple development outcomes with up to 31,000 sqm of office net lettable area across a 14 level building, and alternate schemes provide for two towers comprising a 14 level office and 198 room hotel.
Colliers agents Peter Bremner, Daniel Wolman, Guy Wells and Leon Ma, in conjunction with Real Properties’ Joe Catanese and Lucas Gentile, have been appointed to sell the property via expressions of interest closing 25th March.
“The site offers a unique development proposition being one of the largest remaining sites in Collingwood and with extensive street frontages,” Wells said.
Bremner said the site is at the heart of the newest office precinct to Melbourne. Colliers numbers show a record low city fringe vacancy rate that of 3.29%.
Wells said the large corner site offered a fantastic opportunity to acquire one of the largest land holdings in Collingwood on the main thoroughfare of Wellington St and Gipps St.
“From the Smith/Gertrude Streets retail strips full of bars and restaurants, the many high-rise residential developments coming out of the ground, to the new commercial offices, Collingwood is a chic inner city mixed use suburb.”
V-Leader is controlled by investor Zhang Weian. As of the beginning of marketing, it still had the property listed on its home page, saying it is “currently formulating a project direction to create a truly mixed-use offering that will add to the urban fabric of this prized inner-urban locale”.
“With design excellence as the driving principal, initial concepts for a high rise project are envisioned to include a boutique hotel, up to 20,000 sqm of campus style A-grade office space, childcare for 120 children and a significant and vibrant mix of retail throughout the ground level.”
The site was formerly home to shirt makers Glo-Weave Consolidated.
Recent sales of buildings under construction have demonstrated the popularity of Collingwood’s fledgling office market. RF CorVal has just paid $75.5 million for the 11 storey tower 71-93 Gipps St on behalf of institutional investors with 40% of the property leased to co-working group Spaces, which comes hot on the heels of ARA and QuadReal’s acquisition of a $330 million development just a week earlier. In December, Pace Development offloaded the under-construction 11 level tower at 51 Langridge St for $31.6 million, with just over half of the tower pre-committed.
Across the road, Pace Development Group completed its Pace of Collingwood project last year, while throughout Collingwood, global real estate firm Hines intends to develop a $200 million timber office building on Wellington St, Impact Investment Group’s $120 million, 13-storey Northumberland project is nearly complete, and Cbus is building the Holme residential project with 154 apartments.
