Strong win from supermarkets for elite sports doctor

Capital Gain

High-profile sports doctor Peter Brukner has made a tidy profit, selling a Bellarine Peninsula supermarket to a first-time Chinese investor.

The Woolworths Curlewis Shopping Centre has fetched just over $20 million – a $3 million profit for the good doctor who bought it from the supermarket’s development arm for $17.1 million just five years ago.

The Woolworths Curlewis Shopping Centre.

Currently research professor at La Trobe University, Brukner has also been team doctor to a swathe of sporting teams, including Melbourne and Collingwood football clubs and various national swimming, hockey, athletics, soccer and cricket teams.

He’s also a keen investor in Woolworths supermarkets, having purchased at least three centres along the eastern seaboard in the past five years.

Fabcot built the 4435-square-metre Curlewis centre in 2015. It includes seven shops and is in the heart of the Bayview Estate about 19 kilometres east of Geelong.

Stonebridge Property Group’s Justin Dowers handled the sale with Kevin Tong.

Not so lucky with retail investments is former football player Chris Langdon’s Newmark Capital, which has taken a 20 per cent haircut on the Brandon Park shopping centre in Wheelers Hill.

David di Pilla’s HMC Capital is going to tuck the 23,038-square-metre shopping centre at 580 Ferntree Gully Road into the newly established Last Mile Retail Logistics Fund.

Newmark paid a bullish $135 million to Vicinity and Telstra Super in 2018 and obtained permission to develop a mixed-use project on the large 5.81 hectares of land.

CBRE’s Simon Rooney, James Douglas and David Minty with JLL’s Stuart Taylor, Nick Willis and Jesse Radisich did the deal.

Newmark Capital has sold Brandon Park shopping centre to HMC Capital.Credit: Vicinity Centres

HMC Capital is cashed up. Records show its HomeCo Daily Needs REIT recently sold the HomeCo Ballarat to Ballarat local Justin Bentley for $54 million in an off-market deal brokered by Colliers’ Tim McIntosh.

St Kilda Road

Embattled Edinburgh-based fund manager abrdn (which lost most of its vowels and a capital in a rebranding exercise) is offloading an office it holds far away from the Scottish capital.

The building in question, 432 St Kilda Road, is partly empty, which is not surprising, given the leafy strip’s 27 per cent office vacancy rate, according to the Property Council of Australia’s latest statistics.

The 13-storey Domain precinct building last changed hands in 2014 for $41.6 million when Select Property Holdings (Mauritius) bought it from Yong Quek’s St Kilda Central. Its new asking price is “north of $35 million”.

432 St Kilda Road, Melbourne.

Quek nearly doubled his money over 12 years but abrdn is selling at a low point in the property and economic cycle.

However, the property is on a large 2327-square-metre parcel of land, which is where its value now lies as St Kilda Road returns to its residential roots.

Several build-to-rent apartment towers surround the property, which is close to the new Anzac railway station.

At the time of purchase, the vendor was a subsidiary of Standard Life, which merged in 2017 with Aberdeen Asset Management to become Standard Life Aberdeen.

A controversial rebranding in 2021, when the vowels were dropped, continues to attract apparently unwelcome jokes and attention, not least because it heralded a loss of funds under management and a share price decline.

The Scots have laid off hundreds of staff in the past year, including the chief executive officer, in a restructuring exercise.

JLL’s Paul Kempton, Josh Rutman, Piper Dedrick, and Tim Carr are handling inquiries.

Singer

A block of flats in Hawthorn, half-owned by ethical and moral philosopher Professor Peter Singer, has sold at auction for $5.85 million after bidding from eight parties.

The 15 two-bedroom flats at 34 Auburn Road were built in the 1960s by a previous generation of the vendors’ families.

34 Auburn Road, Hawthorn.

The block is on a large 1283-square-metre parcel of land up the road from Auburn station and around the corner from Carey Grammar and a host of other private schools.

The buyer is understood to be planning to refurbish and strata title the flats. They currently return about $342,000 a year.

CBRE agents Scott Hawthorne, Nathan Mufale, David Minty and JJ Heng ran the auction. The newly cashed-up Singer is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.

Ringwood

The Singaporean owners of the old Jooce nightclub in Ringwood have put the property back on the market.

The corner property at 93-97 Maroondah Highway hasn’t been a nightclub for many years and earns $666,948 a year from rent to gym operator Genesis and clothes retailer Rivers.

Records show Staley Properties bought the 7015-sqaure-metre site in 2020 for $13.5 million. Staley Properties is owned by Singaporean conglomerate Sin Heng Chan Holdings, which has operations all around the world. In Melbourne, it developed the Nest building in Doncaster.

93 Maroondah Highway, Ringwood.

It’s on the corner of Market Street, near Costco, and comes with a permit for 277 units in two towers.

Savills agents Julian Heatherich, Benson Zhou and James Latos have the listing and are expecting more than $20 million.

Venues

Newport Social Club, the pokie-holding hotel leased by the Williamstown Football Club, is up for sale.

The gaming venue at 1 Mason Street, opposite Newport railway station, is owned and operated by the Francis Venues Group and is expected to fetch more than $14 million.

Newport Social Club at 1 Mason Street.

Burgess Rawson’s Zomart He, Matthew Wright and David Napoleone are running the expressions of interest campaign.

The Willie footy club has a five-year lease on the hotel with three more five-year options. It has 66 machines and rakes in more than $7 million from the local community.

The Burgess Rawson team is also selling Estonian House at 43 Melville Road, West Brunswick, for the Estonian community.

Estonian House at 43 Melville Road, West Brunswick.

The 1238-square-metre venue, built in 1928 as the Western Theatre, is on 1043-square-metres of land near the corner of Victoria Street.

The theatre has been owned by the Estonians since the 1970s but is also hired out for weddings, parties and gigs. Last weekend, local rock band Cash Savage and the Last Drinks organised and headlined a two-day festival at the venue.

It could fetch around $3 million, but the final price might depend on the type of buyer and user – philanthropic, community, church or entertainment.

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.