The Well breaks new ground for Camberwell strip

Retailers at Melbourne entrepreneur Andrew Myer's $80 million The Well development at 793 Burke Road will open their doors this month, two years after the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal approved the project, ignoring the Boroondara City Council's concerns about height and density.

Besides a 7000-square-metre shopping centre, The Well includes 2410 sq m of offices and a seven-level apartment tower with 42 units.

The Well is Camberwell's first and only fully enclosed shopping centre, and was designed by architect Bird de la Couer.

Major retail tenants include Coles, JB Hi-Fi, Dymocks and Terry White Chemists.

There is an entrance on Burke Road, north of the busy Camberwell Junction. Fitness club Genesis also signed a 10-year lease for 2400 sq m.

Knight Frank Research estimates retail vacancy levels on Burke Road are a low 1.44%, contributed in part by the opening of a tattoo shop.

This low retail vacancy makes the strip a better performer than Toorak Road, South Yarra (vacancy 7.8%), Glenferrie Road, Malvern (4.8%), and High Street, Armadale (2.6%).

Puckle Street, Moonee Ponds, and Acland Street, StKilda, were the only suburban retail strips to be fully occupied in the September survey.

The Well is a joint venture between Bruce Tilley's First State and Mr Myer, the grandson of Sidney Myer.

In 1914, Sidney developed the eight-level Myer building in the central business district, making it the fifth-biggest department store in the world at the time.

Canterbury sale

MELBOURNE-BASED investment company EG Property Group has paid $12.525 million for Canterbury's former Hedley Sutton Retirement Home for one of its unlisted wholesale property funds.

The 8161 sq m property on the corner of Gascoyne Street and Canterbury Road will become a luxury residential project. The land is already zoned Residential 1. Colliers International's Theo George and Brett Griffith negotiated the sale.

EG Property Group senior manager Alex Banzic told Capital Gain the opportunity to buy a development site for $1500 a square metre, bearing a prestigious address such as Canterbury, represents exceptional value. He expects the company to lodge a development application to council soon.

The property was sold by Baptcare, which last month relocated its 93 residents to a new, $25 million aged-care facility in Linda, one of Canterbury's most renowned historic homes. The 1870 Italianate mansion was built by James McEwan of the now-defunct McEwan Hardware empire.

Honours for school

ORMISTON, the junior school campus of Camberwell Girls Grammar School, has beaten 103 international companies to win a design award at the Annual World Conference & Expo in San Diego this month.

The Hayball Architect-designed campus, designed for 225 students, fitted into an extremely tight site and around existing trees of the college's senior school.

The development picked up the Project of Distinction Award in the Exhibition of School Planning & Architecture at the Council of Educational Facility Planners International conference.

Camberwell Girls principal Anne Feehan said the key element of the brief was to design a school that would encourage discovery, excitement and learning but more importantly maintain the strong sense of community that was so much a part of Camberwell's culture.

The school is expected to reap more than $10 million from the sale of its old Surrey Hills campus, with frontage to St Johns and St Georges avenues. Christopher Russell selling agent Chris Ewart is marketing that property for sale.

Becton to sell hotel

BECTON is hoping to break even from the sale of a prime waterfront development site it fought dozens of developers to buy last year.

The Melbourne-based, ASX-listed developer and fund manager bought the 119-year-old Beaumaris Pavilion Hotel on Beach Road for $11 million in July last year. It was part of a $28 million portfolio of assets Becton bought with the intention of turning into aged-care accommodation.

Sources expect the hotel to fetch about $11 million this time around and possibly wind up in the hands of a residential developer who may propose apartments, a serviced apartment complex or both. Aged care is also a development option.

Redevelopment would offer postcard views over Keefers Cove and Beaumaris Bay.

But Becton disagrees. Confirming it will sell the asset, Becton describes the Beaumaris Hotel as "non-core" and says it will focus its attention on developing aged-care units on the former Reg Hunt car yard site in Dandenong Road, East Malvern, and the former Tudor Court Reception Centre in Caulfield North.

Further up Beach Road towards the city, developer Peter Gillon is redeveloping the former Hampton Rehabilitation Hospital into a four-level, 70-apartment project.

Drapac auction action

INTERESTS associated with private investor Clement Lee paid $5.3 million for a 1194 sq m development site at the northern tip of the CBD this week. It's expected Mr Lee will build a residential apartment building at the site on 204-210 A'Beckett Street.

The asset was one of two properties sold by Drapac at a packed auction on Wednesday.

Another asset at 229-241 Franklin Street, which passed in at auction for $6.4 million, later sold to interests associated with local developer Morry Schwartz for $6.5 million. His company, Pan Urban, is also expected to develop apartments on the 1498 sq m site. He was not available for comment when contacted by Capital Gain.

Knight Frank declined to comment on the identity of the buyers, but director Clinton Baxter said the sale highlights the robust demand for high-calibre CBD properties.

Healeys unearthed

IT SEEMS Melbourne just can't get enough of the laneway lifestyle, with a new retail and office development breaking ground along the emerging hospitality strip of Healeys Lane in the CBD's legal precinct.

The three-storey building - located at the corner of Little Lonsdale Street, west of the Magistrates Court - will offer 413 sq m of retail on the ground floor and 760 sq m of office space on two upper levels.

Commercial Retail Solutions sales and leasing agent David Warren said all six of the ground floor shops would open onto Healeys Lane, creating an "alfresco-style" environment with a mixture of cafes, restaurants and other service providers.

"We're trying really to replicate Degraves Street and Hardware Lane in the north-west of the CBD, and the building's design will fit in with that whole kind of alfresco ambience," Mr Warren said. "There is a large office population (in the area) who aren't really being serviced properly."

The site at 551-555 Little Lonsdale Street was bought in 2006 for $3.28 million by local private developers, the De Lutis family. Industry sources say retail rents in Healeys Lane typically fetch $800 to $1000 a square metre.

Healeys Lane is just one of many laneway revitalisations and re-creations in recent years. Others include the soon-to-be reopened Goldsbrough Lane in the CBW development and the subdivided tenancies of Manchester Lane. CHRIS VEDELAGO