End of the road for Contiki Tour’s grand prix location

Just a block down the hill, buyer sentiment remains bullish. Three bidders from a crowd of 60 made a handful of bids for 189-191 Bourke Street, but bidding came in at $6.05 million.

The three-storey, 525 square meter building is located on 198 square meters of land near the corner of Russell Street.

It’s larger than its neighbor up the road, but the block has been struggling with vacancies since Covid-19 and is far from luxury restaurants close to parliament. But Hungry Jacks will reopen its refurbished store across the road next year and was doing big business during the KFC lunch auction.

The upper floor of the building is vacant, the ground floor restaurant is rented to Nepalese dumpling house Momo, and the second floor is rented to long-time tenant Anda Thai Massage. Total rent is $282,155 per year. Records show the seller paid a whopping $13 million in 2018.

The unfinished campaign was directed by Cushman & Wakefield agents Oliver Hay, Anthony Kirwan, Leon Ma and Daniel Wolman.

Yale locked it up

Property developer Yale Investment Group, the new owner of the Chapel Lane Huts site in South Yarra, is vacating CBD office space.

The company, owned by Andrew and Charlie Sirianni, is planning a new office project for 817 square meters of space at 430-436 Chapel Street. Yale paid $9 million for the site; this was well below its last transaction of $14.2 million.

Yale is currently selling its headquarters on the 13th floor of 50 Market Street, across from Cbus Property’s Collins Arch tower.

The company spent $2 million for the new layout of the 550 square meter floor in 2023; That’s nearly equivalent to the $2.8 million he paid the office in 2015. The listing is held by Anthony Kirwan and George Davies of Cushman & Wakefield and is expected to fetch around $5.5 million.

A review of past ownership records for the 15-storey building reveals that Yale sold enough space last year to nearly cover the cost of the new South Yarra facility.

Several Yale subsidiaries sold the second floor and the seventh, 14th and 15th floors of the ground-floor cafe for a total of $8.59 million.

Investor’s gym offer yielded results

A Shandong-based investor has put $24.65 million into Next Gen gym in Doncaster. Records show Yi Qin’s Charley Tasmania gave notice to the property being developed by Mirvac as part of the Tullamore housing estate on the former East Golf Course.

NextGen paid $8.58 million for the property at 21 Member Drive in 2018.

The sale and leaseback agreement reflected a yield of 6.49 percent. NextGen has a lease on the purpose-built club until 2040, with options until 2060.

CBRE’s Jamie Hess, Sam Guest and Jing Jun Heng led the campaign, which received 12 bids.

Chinese capital-backed buyers are becoming increasingly active in the Melbourne market, particularly in suburban centres. Earlier this year, a Chinese buyer purchased a new Aldi store from Pace Development Group for what is believed to be just under $9 million.

The supermarket, at 3-11 Mitchell Street, is located at the base of a new block of flats at Jackson Court, East Doncaster.

JLL’s Tom Noonan and MingXuan Li brokered the deal. Together with Romanor Falconer, they are now selling the former Barbarino’s property at 546 Doncaster Road. Barbarino’s Holdings paid $1 million for the 4,081-square-foot space in 1986. This place has been called Plume Chinese Restaurant for the last 20 years.

Representatives did not want to comment on the possible sale price, but industry sources suggested it could fetch around $10 million.

Sinopec’s first domestic servo

In other Chinese investment-related news, Chinese government-backed gas and energy giant Sinopec has just opened its first petrol station in Australia.

The servo, developed by Jasbe in 2021, is located at 325 Nepean Highway, Frankston. Sinopec has a new 10-year lease agreement with three five-year options.

Servo is located on a land of 2948 square meters and provides a rental income of $373,000 per year. Cushman & Wakefield’s George Davies, Raphael Favas, Oliver Hay and Leon Ma are listed and are expecting more than $6.5 million.

Grand Theater is on stage again

One of Melbourne’s oldest suburban picture palaces, the Grand Theater at 8 Paisley Street, Footscray, is back on the market after nearly 30 years.

It opened in 1911 and showed films until it became a Fiesta bingo hall in 1987. It currently provides storage for street level stores.

The art nouveau façade of the theater can be seen through the rusty metal façade, which was built in the 1960s.

Savills agents Julian Heatherich and Beau Bakhtani are also on the list, as are two ground floor stores at 10A and 10C. They are expected to gross more than $1.1 million and more than $680,000, respectively, and about $2 million for the theater.

It last changed hands in 1996 for $275,000. The seller, HK Enterprise, is said to be in administration and owes more than $1.56 million to five creditors, primarily ANZ Bank.

“Footscray is going through a process of transformation and areas like this, rich in history but ripe for regeneration, are incredibly rare,” Bakhtani said.