City’s lively streets ‘sealed deal’ as luxury fragrance retailer buys $10.7m Little Collins store

Luxury Singaporean fragrance retailer, Prestige Brands, has splashed out $10.75 million on an empty three-storey building on Little Collins Street.

It’s a serious vote of confidence in the CBD that helps re-establish Little Collins Street’s retail credentials after years as a building site.

The historic building at 285 Little Collins Street faces the rear of the recently rebuilt Melbourne Walk arcade and the old David Jones building.

That puts it within sniffing distance of the Mecca flagship superstore in Bourke Street Mall and its equally new neighbours, the Holiday Inn and Hotel Indigo. The luxury fragrance store might offset some of the testosterone generated by the Rodd & Gunn, Patagonia and Timberland shops which have opened at the back of Mecca and the hotels.

Established in 1983, the Prestige Group sells a wide range of luxury and premium fragrances and cosmetics. It’s understood the business, which recently bought properties in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, is planning a national rollout.

The off-market deal was negotiated by Teska Carson’s Stephen Speck and Michael Ludski, MAKER Property’s Anthony Kirwan and CBRE’s Angus Windred who all declined to comment on the buyer’s identity. But we did get a hint of the buyer’s exacting standards.

“They really wanted to be in the core. We took videos up and down Little Collins Street to demonstrate the area’s 24/7 trading but the walk through Mecca on a Saturday afternoon sealed the deal,” Kirwan told Capital Gain.

The price reflects a building rate of nearly $18,000 a square metre. The building last changed hands in 1996 for $1 million and was most recently leased to GLDNN boutique and Miss Fox beauty spa.

For a long time, during the street’s late 1990s-early 2000s fashion boutique renaissance, it was Scanlan and Theodore’s city flagship and later, home to Cyberia.

Spring has brought forth a wave of shopping centres and supermarkets to market following some serious deal activity.

Vendors have finally made the decision, mostly because “there are more opportunities for their money now,” Stonebridge Property Group’s Justin Dower said.

Dower and colleague Kevin Tong have several on their slate. The Singapore-based Ding family is selling Central Square in Ballarat and expecting around $36 million for the 23,373 sq m sub-regional centre on Armstrong Street.

It’s anchored by Myer and Target and last changed hands in 1995 for $16.57 million. If fully leased, it would return $2.93 million.

Also on the horizon is the Polaris Woolworths and Dan Murphy’s bottleshop on Plenty Road, Bundoora which is expected to fetch around $25 million. The 5807 sq m centre has nine speciality shops and returns $1.46 million a year.

Stonebridge is also marketing a new neighbourhood centre in Cobblebank, anchored by Coles, which has price expectations in the high $40 million range.

The 6326 sq m centre has a 10-year lease to Coles until 2033 and 15 shops. It’s on a 20,858 sq m piece of land and returns $2.65 million a year in rent.

Teska Carson’s Michael Ludski and Matthew Feld are conjunction agents on that listing.

And in Epping North, the ASX-listed Region Group is selling the Epping North Shopping Centre through the Stonebridge team and JLL’s Stuart Taylor and Tom Noonan.

The 5376 sq m centre is anchored by a recently refurbished Woolworths supermarket and is expected to fetch in the mid-to-high $30 million range.

It’s on 1.47 hectares on the corner of Lyndarum Drive and Epping Road and a short drive from the Epping Home & Life large format centre which sold last week for nearly $118 million.

That deal, the largest since 2018, was done by JLL’s Taylor, Noonan and Nick Willis, more than doubled the vendor’s money.

Forza Capital bought the northern suburb’s centre for $54.25 million in 2023 from the ASX-listed HomeCo Daily Needs.

Meanwhile, QIC paid $55.87 million to Frasers Property for the Coles-anchored Mambourin Marketplace in the west. The move came just days after it sold a half stake in Watergardens in Taylor Lakes to the Commonwealth Superannuation fund for $480 million.

At the smaller end of the market, a free-standing Aldi in Seville in the outer east is also for sale and expected to fetch around $9 million.

A family has sold their expansive long-held home in Plenty, on the city’s northern fringe, for a stonking $9.35 million.

A local private developer purchased the deceased estate which is on 3.71 hectares at 29-47 Memorial Drive. The infill site has sweeping city views from its elevated perch and is expected to result in a land subdivision.

Cushman & Wakefield agents Joe Kairouz, Cameron Zamora and Hamish Burgess handled the campaign and received two unconditional offers after the first and second round offers.

The buyer won the day with a 120-day settlement.

“Multiple offers for a site of this scale are a strong result but ultimately, we were left with two unconditional offers, which created genuine competitive tension and helped drive the final result,” Kairouz said.

The land is nestled in the Plenty Gorge Parklands north of Greensborough and Eltham. The soon-to-be-finished North-East Link is a short drive away.

Further east, another infill parcel of land, in Chirnside Park is for sale. The 3.4 hectares of land at 10 East Ridge Drive has planning approval for a 150-unit project and is surplus to a retirement village development undertaken by New Zealand group, Summerset Village.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Kairouz and Burgess and Colliers’ Jozef Dickinson and Philip Heberling have the listing.

Closer to the city, there is a 3227 sq m site for sale near the massive $900 million Wantirna Health Precinct.

The cleared land at 276 Wantirna Road comes with planning approval for 23 townhouses. Records show the City of Knox sold the land at 276 Wantirna Road for $4.63 million in mid-2024.

JLL’s MingXuan Li and Emmett’s Xander Yeo have the listing and are expecting around $4.5 million.

A private investor has snapped up the Dream Haven portfolio in Epping, paying $47.75 million for the 4.6 hectare estate.

The deal comfortably met the $40 million-plus quote price at the start of the campaign and reflected a yield of 6 per cent.

The estate at 2-12 Dream Haven Court and 89-93 Miller Street includes six properties covering a combined 27,539 sq m on five titles, returning $2.89 million a year.

Fitzroys’ Marco Sandrin and Brett Glassford received five expressions of interest for the portfolio.

The estate was built in the mid-1990s by the Kriaris family for the Dream Haven bedding and furniture company. They transformed a large tract of land in Epping, near the Ring Road which was under construction, into industrial space.

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