Chadstone's new shopping wing set to take off

Colonial First State manager Paul Donoghue says the new hub will open on Wednesday, and that all retail space in the project is fully leased. CFS owns the massive shopping centre with Gandel, which has redeveloped the centre in stages since the 1960s.

The Chadstone Place retail precinct will include Melbourne's first Woolworths branded supermarket, signalling the end for the Safeway brand in Victoria, and Australia. In September last year, the shopping centre owner surprised the market announcing it would go ahead with a major office building without first finding a tenant to occupy part of the space.

Sources say music and electrical retailer JB Hi-Fi is looking closely at leasing up to 4000 square metres of the 8000 sq m office tower. However, JB Hi-Fi managing director Richard Uechtritz said Chadstone Place is one of several buildings the group is considering.

Mr Donoghue said fresh and high-end food retailers including Jones the Grocer, Simon Johnson and Tangello Fine Foods will open in Chadstone Place, joining Fitness First Platinum and Dick Smith Powerhouse.

Science Project

THE on again-off again campaign to sell the Church of Scientology Melbourne headquarters at

42 Russell Street is on again, and it's public.

Colliers International's Matthew Stagg and Pat Burke will auction the church's outgoing headquarters, on the north-east corner of Flinders Lane next month.

The building has been touted off-market for private sale this year at between $7.5 million and

$8 million, but no deal was done. The building was withdrawn from sale just before a scheduled auction in October 2005.

The church paid $720,000 for the building in June 1980.

Since that time, major office buildings in the form of

101 Collins Street, the Collins Place towers, 120 Collins Street and 8 Exhibition Street have been developed nearby, creating a vibrant Flinders Lane retail market. Federation Square is also a block away.

Mr Stagg said a number of high-profile restaurateurs, retailers and boutique hotel operators had made offers to buy the property direct from the vendor. He said there is the potential to add additional floors to the building, which would make it attractive to a developer.

Learning the ropes

THE association of Independent Schools of Victoria is making an educated property play - selling a property in a booming suburb after buying a property in an up-and-coming precinct.

The AISV can expect to make about $4.5 million from the sale of its outgoing

1470 sq m office building, on a 735 sq m block in South Yarra's Garden Street.

The site is across the road from the Jam Factory entertainment complex, earmarked for a $700 million redevelopment.

Gross Waddell agents Andrew Waddell and Andrew Greenway expect 20 Garden Street to arouse interest from developers keen to exploit the site's position and more than 50-metre street frontage. It's expected, given high-rise apartment proposals at the Jam Factory, that a new Garden Street building could stand considerably higher than the current building's existing two levels.

The AISV recently paid about $5.75 million for an art-deco three-level, 1839 sq m office at 24-40 Rosslyn Street in West Melbourne, between King Street and the Queen Victoria Market.

Agents win top gongs

A CAMPAIGN to sell 20 shops on the ground floor of Southbank's Freshwater Place apartment building won the highest accolade at the Real Estate Institute of Victoria's 15th annual Awards For Excellence night last Thursday.

CB Richard Ellis director Mark Wizel accepted the Gold Award for the $47 million retail portfolio sale, which also won Best Sales Campaign with a budget in excess of $45,000.

Fitzroys won an award for the Best Leasing Campaign with a budget in excess of $45,000, for its role filling Camberwell's first and only fully enclosed shopping centre, The Well.

Colliers International picked up the Best Leasing Campaign with a budget between $20,000 and $45,000, for leasing space at CBW on the corner of Bourke and William streets in the CBD. Errol Street-based agency WB Simpson and Son won the Best Sales Campaign with a budget between $20,000 and $45,000, for its sale of a West Melbourne property.

Prominent south-eastern agency Nichols Crowder Property Solutions picked up three awards including the prestigious Commercial Agency of the Year.

Colliers International's David Butera was acknowledged by the REIV as the Commercial Salesperson of the Year.

Jones to head REIV

MEANWHILE the REIV has announced it will re-appoint Adrian Jones as its president for 2008-09.

Mr Jones, who is chief executive of the Noel Jones Real Estate Group, returns to the role he held in 2006-07.

Mr Jones replaces Neil Laws, who remains on the REIV board.

Moves at Grayjohnson

MANAGEMENT and ownership changes have taken place at 94-year-old commercial and industrial agency Grayjohnson, with current director Matt Hoath and incoming partner Daniel Cusack purchasing the equity in the firm from Malcolm Gray.

Mr Hoath will continue as managing director while Mr Cusack will head a new property investment department. Mr Gray will remain with the group as a consultant and director.

Lane site nets $5.6m

AN UNDISCLOSED owner-occupier is understood to have outmuscled a swarm of investors to buy a heritage-protected office building at

179 Flinders Lane.

The part-vacant five-level Maria George building sold at auction on Wednesday for $5.6million.

Four prospective purchasers continued to bid for the property after it was announced - on the market - at

$5.2 million.

Mulcahy & Co director Chris Mulcahy said the result demonstrated the very high level of demand for freestanding CBD buildings.

He said there were more than 100 inquiries from prospective purchasers.