ValueBuddies.com : Value Investing Forum - Singapore, Hong Kong, U.S.

Full Version: Australia: Plan for 2300-unit development at Melbourne's Fishermans Bend
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
THE latest proposal adds to Melbourne's apartment glut. Watch out CES and Ho Bee...

Plan for 2300-unit development at Melbourne's Fishermans Bend
BY:SARAHA DANCKERT From: The Australian July 11, 2013 12:00AM
Increase Text Size
Decrease Text Size
Print


The former industrial area of Fishermans Bend, in Melbourne's southwest, has attracted a record number of development proposals. Source: Supplied
AN unlikely developer consortium made up of a Melbourne lawyer turned winemaker and two car salesmen has filed plans for a $1 billion-plus, 2300 apartment development proposal in Melbourne's Fishermans Bend precinct - the third-largest apartment project proposed for Melbourne.

Consortium partners lawyer George Kefford and car dealership owners Gary Brill and John Eyre are seeking a permit to build six apartment towers on two adjoining blocks of land on Ingles and Turner streets in the industrial area that was rezoned into five residential suburbs last year.

Kefford, who also owns Merricks Estate Wine and Winery in Victoria, and Brill and Eyre, who jointly own a host of car dealerships around Melbourne, have asked the state government to approve their development on the two sites that sit behind Mirvac's successful Array apartment project in the new suburb of Lorimer, which was previously a part of Port Melbourne.

The application was made through Belsize Nominees, where Kefford and Brill are directors and Eyre's Cojas Holdings.

The Ingles Street site will hold five towers of 1915 apartments over two podiums, more than 14,000sq m of office space and 4300sq m of retail-arcade space. The Turner Street site, currently a car park, will have a single tower with 361 apartments.

In the past year, the Fishermans Bend area has attracted 23 high rise apartment proposals, including development applications from the Alter family, the Buxton family's MAB Corp and the Bob Jane Group.

The eight largest project proposals together add up to 7500 apartments with an end value in excess of $3bn.

The majority of approved proposals are expected to be subject to permit flipping, a process where land owners seek development approvals to increase the value of their site prior to selling the property to a developer, according to agent sources.

If developed, the rush of applications would add to Melbourne's already bloated apartment market, where warnings of a potential glut were sounded by the Reserve Bank of Australia in September and again in March.

Melbourne's second-largest project, Chinese developer Far East Consortium's Upper West Side project with more than 2500 units, is already under construction in the Melbourne CBD.