Queensland's fourth richest person, BRW Rich Lister Neville Pask, is paying local businessman Vince LaManna a speculated price in excess of $60 million for Rowville's prominent Kingston Links golf course, which is now mooted to become a billion dollar housing estate.
The 67 hectare property, 27 kilometres south east of Melbourne, is trading off-market, 13 years after the LaManna Direct supermarket founder paid $14 million for it.
The property has always been considered a challenge to repurpose for residential: an awkward C-shape and with little street frontage, a large section is subject to an Indundation Overlay, falling within a flood plain along the Corhanwarrabul Creek.
Numerous imposing electricity transmission towers also slice through the golf course. In 2008, the Eastlink freeway was built beside it.
But with Rowville's median value steadily rising in recent years, time and costs associated with preparing the site for redevelopment look likely to be returned following any subdivision.
Neville Pask's development arm Pask Group is touting the Corporate Avenue site as a sustainable residential project with up to 800 dwellings, commercial and public space.
Pask Group has applied to the City of Knox council to have the special use zoning affecting the golf course changed to general residential. A pre-submission process requesting community feedback is underway.
Company spokesman Marcus Hancock told Fairfax Media it is also working with Melbourne Water to create an area which would be free from flooding and the restrictive overlay. He confirmed a confidential agreement was reached to buy the site, which has not yet settled.
For octogenarian Mr Pask, who started his empire in the 1960s in the dry cleaning business, the Kingston Links site marks a return to the first Victorian suburb he invested in, 18 years ago.
The Gympie-born entrepreneur paid what was considered a bullish price of $24 million for a Rowville site he turned into a 670-lot housing estate, Sovereign Crest, pocketing a reported $50 million profit.
Mr LaManna, meanwhile, who still controls a property portfolio, has established a fresh food market in a historic former hangar at Essendon Fields. He and his brother Greg are sons of Pasquale (Pat) LaManna, 2009 Senior Australian of the Year, who in 1953 established the family's first fruit shop business in West Preston before rapidly expanding and selling in 2003.
Karingal Village SC sells
Frankston's modest Karingal Village Shopping Centre has sold for a price speculated to be more than $6.5 million.
The 2328 square metre complex on a 6430 square metre site with a common area including part of a 105-bay car park, is believed to have sold to a local investor. The retail asset has the potential to generate a yearly rental return of $440,322. Knight Frank's Ken Smirk and Tim Grant declined to comment further than to confirm the property sold.
Omnico beats Westfield for strategic Shoppingtown site
Shopping centre giant Westfield has passed on the opportunity to buy a strategic site on a 1.32 hectare plot abutting its Airport West Shoppingtown complex.
The Commercial 1 zoned factory at 42 Moore Street has sold for a speculated price of between $6.5 million and $7 million to local business park developer, Omnico.
Colliers International's Marco Sandrin and Brent Glassford declined to comment about any part of the campaign they managed on behalf of fuel dispenser manufacturer Gilbarco Veeder-Root which offered 42 Moore Street with a short-term leaseback.
The asset includes a brick 4385 square metre double storey factory, an open air car park and two large, level tracts of level land. It is in a pocket of the suburb, 11 kilometres north west of town, where industrial sites are beginning to be replaced with medium density apartment complexes.
The suburb is west of the Essendon Airport, part of which is being redeveloped as Essendon Fields.
Vicinity shops for more flats at The Glen
Meanwhile, 19 kilometres south of the CBD in Glen Waverley, Vicinity Centres has won approval to construct more apartments within a proposed residential complex at The Glen shopping centre. Vicinity can now build nearly 540 flats – up from the 427 previously approved – in towers up to 13 levels. Following the proposed $500 million revamp, the mixed-use complex will also contain more than 70,000 square metres of lettable retail area.
In September, Vicinity said it has temporarily ruled out building apartments at the Chadstone Shopping Centre it co-owns. However, across town, GPT Group has mooted that thousands of apartments, a university, hotel and medical hub could be built at Highpoint Shopping Centre, Maribyrnong, which was recently rezoned to allow for such a redevelopment.
JTX flips ex-VicRoad site
After saying in September that it planned to turn the first sods of dirt at its Humex development in Craigieburn within four to six months, JTX has listed the site for sale.
The China-backed builder can expect to almost double its money from the flip, with a price tag of about $15 million attached to the 31 hectare sites known as 650 and 700 Hume Highway.
JTX paid $8.25 million for the prominent block which VicRoads listed more than six years ago. The developer recently won permission to build a major mixed-use community on the parcel, with high density apartments, a 4-star hotel, homemaker centre and offices.
Knight Frank's Tim Grant and Gab Pascuzzi with Savills Julian Heatherich and Michael Green are marketing the Craigieburn block.
Bethlehem Hospital proposes 19 levels at Caulfield South
The Calvary Bethlehem Hospital is behind the plan to build what will be one of suburban Melbourne's tallest apartment complexes.
The proposed Calvary Bethlehem Health and Retirement precinct is earmarked to replace Caulfield South addresses at 472 and 476-482 Kooyong Road and 11 Saturn Street.
Being reviewed by council, the application requests for the demolition of the existing Bethlehem Hospital, and construction of new buildings ranging in height between three and 19-levels. As well as traditional and specialist hospital services, the $73.3 million redevelopment will include an 80-bed aged care complex and child care centre
The tall tower, set to be developed on the north-west corner of Kooyong Road and Saturn Street, will include 85 independent living units, some configured with two bedrooms. If approved, the hospital will allocate 457 square metres of the parcel as public open space.
Unlike other suburban skyscrapers recently earmarked around suburban Melbourne, the hospital site is not easily accessible to a train station. The hospital plans to create 190 car parks within two basement levels of the proposed health and retirement complex.
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