Sydney Pub Baron to Make Melbourne Debut
Sydney hotelier Justin Hemmes has paid $40 million to acquire Tomasetti House in Flinders Lane for his Merivale Group’s first venue outside of New South Wales.
The historic 7-storey brick and bluestone CBD building at 277-279 Flinders Lane is currently fully leased, tenanted by Zomp Shoes on the ground level with office tenants above, and bar and restaurant The Mill House – operated by vendors the Millett family – in the basement level. The Mill House opened in the former Liberty Social space following a $3 million refurbishment.
Tomasetti House is positioned between Degraves Street and Elizabeth Street, on the corner of Rothsay Lane, and is recorded by the National Trust and listed as a notable building in the Melbourne Planning Scheme. It was built in 1853 by William Degraves as a 5-storey flour mill and grain store, and reworked in 1905 with an Art Nouveau façade and extra levels added.
The Millett family bought the property in 2014 from Shesh Ghale $16.2 million.
Merivale Group owns and operates around 80 venues in Sydney, including Mr. Wong, Totti’s and Mimi’s, and the Ivy Precinct, and recently made its first purchase outside of the city on the New South Wales South Coast. It will take control of Tomasetti House later this year.
Tivoli Arcade Set For Refurbishment
Also in the Melbourne CBD, Sydney-based Futuro Capital has acquired the Tivoli Arcade soon after buying the 14 levels of office and education space above it from RMIT in a separate transaction.
Futuro paid $133 million for levels 4 to 17 of 235-251 Bourke Street in a sale and leaseback deal with RMIT, which will see the university lease the 23,014sqm property for 5 years. The price reflected a 6% initial yield.
Futuro has now also bought the Tivoli Arcade, retail shops and car park over the lower three levels for $73 million from Venton International, giving it control of the entire building.
The second tranche comprises around 6,000sqm of space. The Tivoli Arcade, close to the intersection of Bourke Street and Swanston Street, is set to be refurbished.
Local Consortium Buys Northern Growth Corridor Parcel
Hospitality operators the Scerri family and Chinese-backed local developer Sino Integrity Group have formed a consortium to buy 434ha of land in Beveridge, in Melbourne’s northern growth corridor.
They acquired 1545 Merriang Road and 300 Donovan’s Lane, known as Merri Park, for around $100 million from the descendants of prominent business figure Sir Cecil Looker, who was also private secretary to Prime Minister Robert Menzies.
The former farm can potentially support between 900 and 1,000 housing lots within a new 110ha suburb, as part of the Donnybrook-Woodstock Precinct Structure Plan, and a 199ha industrial estate within the Beveridge Intermodal Freight Terminal precinct.
Joseph Scerri’s JMS Hospitality group owns the Sebel Hotel in Moonee Ponds and a number of pubs across Melbourne, including Dorset Gardens in Croydon, the Roxburgh Park Hotel and Diamond Creek Tavern.
Disclosure: The weekly Fitzroys Property Wrap is for information only on transactions in the Melbourne property market. Fitzroys provides this information as a public service. We are not purporting that all sales and leases within this report were transacted by Fitzroys. Terms/Privacy © Copyright 2021 Fitzroys.