By Clay Lucas
When property investor Yan Qiu bought the dilapidated shop-and-dwelling on the corner of King and La Trobe streets in 2021, his purchase came with a promise to restore the building.
But with no restoration work done to the 174-year-old building since then – other than the removal of a 60-year-old English oak tree – reports obtained from Melbourne City Council under freedom of information show it is in an increasingly dire state.
The heritage-listed building, constructed in 1850, had to be propped up in 2017 to stop it collapsing. The scaffolding remains in place.Credit: Joe Armao
“This is one of the best examples in Victoria of demolition by neglect,” said Lachlan Molesworth, barrister and deputy chair of the National Trust, who wants more done to force owners of heritage buildings like it to repair them.
“We have this gaping hole in our heritage protection laws,” Molesworth said. “It would be inconceivable that this would happen in somewhere like the United Kingdom, or Europe, or indeed parts of America. Here, orders might be made – but there is very little that happens in terms of consequences if those orders are not followed.”
In August 2023, the state’s authority for protecting historic buildings, Heritage Victoria, ordered Qiu to carry out urgent restoration works to prevent further deterioration of the building (which was long known as Russell’s Old Corner Shop). Four months later, Qiu promised he would carry out the repairs in 2024.
The works, meant to start in May this year, failed to materialise, and a statement on Friday by Heritage Victoria said it now expected these works to be done in 2025.
The tiny shop-and-dwelling has gradually been dwarfed by towers that have grown around it.Credit: Joe Armao
Qiu on Friday said the building had not been fixed because of the level of bureaucracy he faced in trying to repair it. “You know how much red tape we [face] there? You have never been through this before,” said Qiu, who was once chief executive of Ozford College, a school for international students in Lonsdale Street.
Qiu owns not only Russell’s Old Corner Shop, which he bought for $1.875 million, but the next three neighbouring properties stretching from 310 King Street to the old shop at 330 King Street. The buildings cost Qiu’s company Aqua Greenland Pty Ltd $32 million to acquire over nine years, and the land they sit on spans 1270 square metres – a major site for this end of the city. Qiu was reluctant to discuss his other property holdings on Friday, and on Saturday could not be reached.
Josh Rutman, head of capital markets for Victoria at international real estate firm JLL, stressed that while he was not talking specifically about the properties owned by Qiu, a large piece of land in this part of the city could sell for up to $40,000 per square metre. “Demand from interstate and international buyers for substantial land parcels remains robust,” he said.
Yan Qiu shakes hands with the family of the building’s former owners after buying it in 2021. Qiu’s company Aqua Greenland owns the three accompanying sites as well.Credit: Justin McManus
The Age asked Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny, who has responsibility for heritage matters, if Victoria had tough enough laws to force owners of heritage properties to care for them, and what consequences those who neglected historic buildings faced. Her spokesman said: “There are penalties in place for owners who fail to maintain heritage places.”
The opposition’s planning spokesman James Newbury said the state government was “useless at pushing owners of heritage-listed properties to maintain or care for them properly”.
Four engineering and arborist reports on Russell’s Old Corner Shop, written between 2017 and 2023 and released to The Age by Melbourne City Council after a year-long freedom of information battle, show the “dilapidated” building facing near collapse unless repair works are done. Part of the building needs to be “demolished and rebuilt”, one report said.
The shop-and-dwelling was built in 1850. In 1899, it was bought by the family of Lola Russell. She was born in the store in 1922 and lived there almost her entire life – she and husband George Dixon moved out only when the building became uninhabitable around 2017.
The backyard last week of the heritage-listed building on the corner of King and La Trobe streets.Credit: Joe Armao
That year, with the pair unable to maintain the building, the city council paid about $30,000 to brace a wall leaning into La Trobe Street, as a matter of public safety. Seven years later, the bracing is still there, with a council spokeswoman saying the scaffolding needed to stay “to keep the area safe and protect the building”.
Lola Russell died in August this year, aged 102. Molesworth said her home of almost a century was “a particularly important example of old Melbourne” that should be maintained and preserved.
Lola Russell and husband George Dixon pictured outside the building in 2017.Credit: Chris Hopkins
“It is not the mega-mansion of a captain of industry but rather a time capsule of early pioneering life in Victoria – 100 years in the same family, home upstairs and a simple local store facing the street. It survived in that format as a family home and shop all the way through to about 2020. It is an indictment that it is being allowed to sit vacant and deteriorate.”
Lachlan Molesworth, deputy chair of the National Trust, in front of the dilapidated building, once known as Russell’s Old Corner Shop.Credit: Joe Armao
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