Melbourne identity Mick Gatto snaps up St Marys Anglican church for $4m
Capital Gain
Melbourne identity and industrial relations mediator Mick Gatto has snapped up the former St Marys Anglican church in Preston.
Gatto’s not-for-profit, Equal Access for Autism, which he runs with his wife Cheryl, is paying more than $4 million for the church and vicarage, built in 1922, on the corner of Plenty Road.
The church was empty from 2008 until 2021 before healthy food charity Sustain moved in and set up the Oakhill Food Justice Farm in the vicarage and its garden.
St Marys Anglican Church at 233 Tyler Street, Preston, has been bought by Mick Gatto.
Gatto told Capital Gain he was planning a walk-through during the week with consultants to look at what could be done with the property. The industrial fixer wants to fill the church with a huge indoor playground, along with treatment rooms and a cafe.
“It’ll be the first of its kind, possibly in the world,” he said.
The urban farm feeds hundreds of people every week and provides a paid internship program for Aboriginal people. “The farm would provide a sensory garden that would be beneficial for people with autism,” Sustain founder and executive director Nick Rose said.
The church at 233 Tyler Street is on a 2622 square-metre site high on the hill overlooking the eastern suburbs. The sale was negotiated by Gross Waddell ICR agents Danny Clark and Julian Materia.
On the ropes
Chinese-backed 3L Alliance has snapped up Kinnear’s Rope Factory in Footscray, paying $39 million for the site, which cost its vendor $60 million in 2016. Ouch!
Records show the deal settled in the last week of January at a price significantly lower than the $65 million asking price.
It’s the latest property bought at the peak of the past market cycle finding new values in the doldrums. Funder MaxCap has reportedly received a $68 million offer for APH Holding’s Forest Hill site for which APH paid $91.5 million in 2017.
The Kinnears Rope Factory site has sold for $39 million.
The 2.99 hectare Footscray site comes with an approved development plan for more than 1200 dwellings.
The vendor R&F Property, the local subsidiary of cash-strapped Hong Kong-listed developer Guangzhou R&F Properties, had completed just one apartment building and a restoration of the old factory.
Guangzhou R&F has been under pressure in the past two years with creditors calling in debt and threatening to wind up the company.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Joe Kairouz, Hamish Burgess and Leon Ma handled the transaction.
3L Alliance has been operating in Melbourne for 10 years and has completed the Queens Place tower project on the corner of Queen and A’Beckett streets and two housing developments in Melton East.
Going up
Nicole Chow’s United Asia Group, which sat out the downturn after completing its West Melbourne project in 2023, has announced a new project in Toorak.
UAG paid $7.3 million for the tiny 420 sq m site in Toorak Village in 2017 but held off starting the 8 Wallace Avenue project for a few years while building costs soared.
Krongold has been hired to build the eight-storey building which will have six single-floor apartments with offices on the ground floor.
Render of UAG’s 8 Wallace Avenue project in Toorak.
The building is likely to help obscure the brutalist Trak Centre tower next door. UAG has two more Toorak sites in the pipeline as the company concentrates on the top end of the market.
UAG marks 30 years in the property business in 2025 and has completed $2 billion worth of projects in Singapore, Australia, the USA and the UAE.
Toorak Village is in the middle of a huge transformation that kicked off in 2019 when Bill McNee’s VicLand paid $80 million for the Village Way shopping arcade.
McNee effectively doubled the price paid by Chow around the corner and has since completed the successful $600 million St Germain mixed use project.
Joining the throng rebuilding the Village skyline is Orchard Piper which has spent $97 million on two sites in the Village.
Construction is well advanced on its Mathoura Road project and a second, on the old Mercedes Benz dealership on Carters Avenue, which is backed by James Packer’s investment group NPACT, recently got the green light from Stonnington Council.
Oh, darling
Still south of the Yarra but down the Domain end of the riverside neighbourhood, new development group Soliana has bought a block of old post-war-era flats at 39 Darling Street for slightly less than its vendors paid in 2016.
Soliana is paying $5.85 million for the 672 sq m site with sweeping views high on the hill near the corner of Domain Road. The property comes with a permit for six large apartments over five levels.
39 Darling Street, South Yarra.
Its vendors, a local syndicate, paid $5.97 million during the property market peak. Those values are just about holding tight.
Cushman & Wakefield agents Hamish Burgess, Joe Kairouz, and Jeffery Ha did the deal.
Floral tribute
International flower delivery business Interflora finally sold its Prahran head office late last year with Ben Buxton’s B & B Property Group picking it up for around $9 million.
Interflora had owned and occupied the property at 4-12 St Edmonds Road for more than 20 years before putting it on the market in September 2023.
The double-storey building is on a 964 sq m parcel of land between Greville and High streets and comes with Activity Centre zoning that allows for multi-level redevelopment.
Interflora’s headquarters at 4-12 St Edmonds Road, Prahran.
Gorman Allard Shelton agents Peter Bremner and Jonathon McCormack did the deal.
“There was interest from owner occupiers looking to buy the building for their own office headquarters, but as it turned out, the development value exceeded the office value,” Bremner said.
Buxton already has plans for the site drawn up by Cera Stribely Architects.
Interflora bought new city-fringe digs in West Melbourne where it is relocating in 2026. The company will pocket some change out of the deal. Records show it paid $2.58 million for 114-118 Miller Street in January 2022.
On the move
The German community’s Prahran headquarters, Club Tivoli, is on the market with a permit for a six-storey apartment project.
Club Tivoli is on a large 3085 sq m site on the corner of Dandenong Road and Chomley Street and is expected to fetch more than $18 million.
The German Club, established in 1860, has been operating on the Prahran site for more than 35 years.
For sale: Club Tivoli on the corner of Dandenong Road and Chomley Street, Prahran.
It first applied for a residential development permit in 2020 and finally obtained approval for a six-level project in 2022. Plans to retain a club and restaurant in the new building have been discarded.
Knight Frank’s Stephen Kelly, Tom Ryan and Nick Bisset and Colliers’s Jozef Dickinson, Alex Browne and Philip Heberling have the listing.
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