Mystery private group wants to sell 17 Melbourne properties for $100m

By Nicole Lindsay

October 18, 2024 — 6.00am

A mysterious private syndicate has amassed a 8.36-hectare site in North Dandenong which could fetch more than $100 million.

Dubbed “The Island” by its selling agents, the huge collection of properties includes an unwieldy 17 titles – the largest controlled by the Gateway East Group – ranging from 277 sq m up to 21,483 sq m.

Zoned Commercial 2, it has a long frontage on the Princes Highway, Heatherton Road and Adelaide Street just south of the intersection with Eastlink.

Aerial of “The Island” site on Princes Highway, North Dandenong.

The Dandenong CBD, which has scored huge state government investment in the past 15 years, is a few minutes’ drive down the road.

There is a range of tenants in the various light industrial and car dealership properties, including Telstra, Ecco, Link Building Solutions and Australian Custom Joinery.

CBRE’s Trent Hobart, Nathan Mufale, Chris O’Brien and David Aiello have the listing. They declined to provide a price guide but Dandenong’s expensive industrial property values puts the price north of $100 million.

Archives pay

A Sydney-based syndicator has nabbed the National Archives’ office in East Burwood, paying almost $32 million.

The deal is unusual for 2024 – the price it sold for is higher than the $30 million quote price at a time when many offices and development sites have struggled to meet vendors’ hopes or match their original purchase prices.

The property at 31 Vision Drive last changed hands in 2015, when the Dorman family, which founded Regis Healthcare, bought it for $24.25 million.

The federal government agency, which stores the nation’s most important documents, has leased the property for 30 years.

Dorman Capital boss Nicholas Dorman said a recent five-year lease renewal to the Commonwealth Government had been a catalyst for the group to sell up and redirect the capital into its development pipeline.

The 6432 square metre office is on a large 11,860 sq m site in the Tally Ho precinct.

CBRE’s Scott Orchard and Will Heffernan and Gorman Commercial’s Peter Bremner and Jonathan McCormack handled the deal, which reflected a sub-7.5 per cent yield.

The sale follows the recent CBRE transaction of another office building with a long lease at 107 Overton Road, Williams Landing.

Perth-based fund manager Ascot Capital paid just over $25 million, reflecting a sharp 6.5 per cent yield, for an office with a 10-year lease to the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority for just over $25 million.

The vendor, the Canberra-based Hellenic Club, paid around $25 million in 2018 for the then brand-new building. While it missed out on any uplift in capital values, it made up for it with depreciation benefits.

Developer Cedar Woods, which is developing Williams Landing, has just broken ground on its sixth office building at Williams Landing, a strata project.

Cold storage

Still out west, Charlie Buxton’s Cadence Property Group has put the finishing touches to its $700 million industrial estate in Truganina with one of the few pre-lease deals struck this year.

The $120 million purpose-built cold storage facility at The Crossing will aim for a 5-star green rating, boasting two megawatts of rooftop solar and other state-of-the-art warehouse management technology.

Laverton Cold Storage, which has been supplying refrigerated logistics in the area since 1975, will occupy the 23,118 sq m building which includes 16,000 sq m of freezer space that can be chilled up to -24 degrees Celsius.

The giant new fridge-freezer is partly funded by Cadence’s maiden fund, the Cadence Australian Real Estate Partnership I, with the remaining equity coming from private investors.

The Crossing is a 50-hectare mixed-use business park near the intersection of Leakes and Forsyth roads. Texco Construction has started work and operations are expected to start in late 2025.

West Melbourne

Up for sale in the semi-industrial city-fringe suburb, where thousands of apartments have been built in the past 10 years, is 371 Spencer Street.

Bought by Omnico for $6.8 million, the historic three-storey office was part of the Sands & McDougall portfolio sold by Probuild founder Phil Mehrten, developer Ozzie Kheir and developer Frank Palazzo in 2020.

They made a mint – if not as much as they’d hoped – selling three properties for $55 million after paying $38.8 million in 2015. The main building at 355 Spencer Street was bought by Sydney fund manager Avari Capital for $38.5 million.

CBRE agents David Minty, Scott Hawthorne, Nathan Mufale and JJ Heng are marketing the property and are expecting in the high-$7.5-8 million range.

Hawthorne said the property is likely to attract interest from owner occupiers looking for a new headquarters on the city’s edge.

At its rear is the Deague Group’s new residential project, Melbourne Village, which has 529 apartments in 28 and 22 level buildings.

The stalled development site sector is yielding plenty of opportunities for owner-occupiers to get back in the market close to the city.

Commercial carpenter FDC Construction & Fitout has nabbed a West Melbourne warehouse for $2.33 million, beating two other owner-occupiers bidding at last week’s auction.

The 460 sq m office-warehouse at 280-286 Rosslyn Street is on a 460 sq m site near the railway line, facing the rear of Festival Hall.

While it’s in the special use zone and could get a new three-storey building, FDC is moving closer to the CBD, where it does fit-out work on office and residential towers.

Records show the vendor paid just $400,000 in 1988. Stonebridge agents Max Warren, Dylan Kilner and Tony Sun handled the auction.

Down the road at 88 Miller Street, on the corner of Abbotsford Street, another owner-occupier is paying $2.5 million for a 315 sq m building on 311 sq m of land.

Expanding commercial cleaner, EHS Assess, is moving out of Stubbs Street, Kensington.

Records show it last changed hands in 2016 for $2.4 million to Villawood Properties director Tony Johnson. Stonebridge’s Warren, Kilner and Chao Zhang did the deal.

Other recent transactions in the neighbourhood include 120 Miller Street, which sold to an education group for $6.27 million and 102-104 Millers Street, which was bought for $2.1 million by a Vietnamese investor. Another owner-occupier paid $2.3 million for 470 Spencer Street.

Summer surf

Just in time for summer, a Melbourne-based investor has snapped up a row of shops on the Great Ocean Road in Anglesea after only 14 days on the market.

The 418 sq m property at 97-101a Great Ocean Road is on an 871 sq m piece of land with four leased shops and a vacant first floor apartment. They return $177,940 a year in income.

Colliers agents Ned Tansey, Jonathon Lumsden and Jackson Carrick handled the speedy transaction but declined to reveal the price.