Capital Gain
World-renowned fetish shop Eagle Leather will have to start looking around for a new eyrie after its landlord put the Abbotsford building up for sale.
The warehouse at 80 Hoddle Street, along with its neighbours, Dogs HQ doggie daycare at No. 88 and car-wrapping colourists WRAPitude, are all on the market.
The three businesses have leases which expire within a four-month window in early 2029 with no options to extend, giving potential buyers a crack at redevelopment.
It’ll be a wrench for Eagle Leather, which has been selling and manufacturing leatherwear on Hoddle Street since 1994. It’s operated out of No. 80 since 2010.
For Eagle Leather it’s the old story about gentrification, compounded by the significant but fragile long-term queer subculture in Abbotsford.
But it also has a link to the area’s working-class past, which was dominated by tanneries. Eagle is one of the few remaining businesses in Abbotsford to process leather.
Overseas shoppers – some famous – regularly drop in to Eagle Leather, which is on an LGBQTI tourist map, writing their signatures on the shop’s brick wall.
“We have a real sentimental attachment to the building and we offered to buy it,” Eagle Leather boss BJ told Capital Gain.
“But it’s about the three buildings in a row and the land size and we can’t afford that,” BJ said. “We’re hoping we can take the [signed] bricks, though.”
Records show the vendor paid $1.575 million for the 1233-square-metre parcel of Commercial 2-zoned land in 2002.
Chapter X’s Trent Skapetis, Natalia Radenkovic and Peter Skapetis are handling the expressions of interest campaign but declined to reveal more details about the site. The expected price could hit the $11 million mark.
Yorkshire pub
Down the road, on the corner of Langridge Street, the Yorkshire Stingo pub and the East City Motel at its rear are also for sale, for about $8 million.
Records show the pub and motel at 40-48 Hoddle Street and 181 Langridge Street are owned by Bella Freeman of the Freeman property developer family, which undertook the Dimmeys redevelopment on Swan Street, Richmond.
The two properties are on 1136 sq m of land and adjoin another 1121 sq m parcel at 187-203 Langridge Street owned by Munro Shoes, one of the last remaining shoe manufacturers in Abbotsford.
Records show Freeman recently withdrew a caveat over 187-203 Langridge Street, giving up an option to buy the site. Local sources suggest a plan to develop a residential tower on the 2257 sq m corner was rejected by the state government. The Munro portfolio is expected to sell for around $7.5 million.
Stonebridge Property Group agents Max Warren, Dylan Kilner, Nic Hage and Chao Zhang have the listing but declined to comment.
The Stonebridge team is pretty busy in this neck of the woods. Around the corner, at 9-11 Bloomburg Street, they’re also managing the sale of a huge 1175 sq m “man cave” owned by one of Australia’s largest McDonald’s franchisees, Heath Fitzgerald.
The luxuriously decked-out property is for sale at around $8.5 million. While the Fitzgerald family owns more than 10 Maccas outlets in the north-east, the one next to the Yorkshire Stingo is not one of them.
On the sunnyside
Mario Verrocchi, one of the billionaire founders of the Chemist Warehouse chain, has snapped up an 18-hectare mini-vineyard in Mount Eliza, across the road from his Morning Star estate.
Verrocchi bought the 1175 Nepean Highway property in late March after an expressions-of-interest campaign was converted to a closed boardroom auction.
Records show the land last sold in 2004 for $2.5 million to Teresa and Fred Ursini. However a bitter family stoush over the late Teresa Ursini’s estate forced the sale of the property by receivers.
In 2020, Fiona and Mario Verrocchi paid $30.66 million for the historic Morning Star estate and vineyard, which had been a high-profile wedding venue.
The property, originally known as Sunnyside, was bought in the 1930s by the Catholic Church, which ran it as a boys’ home until the mid-1970s.
Down the road is Sunnyside Beach, while the Freedman family’s Pinecliff Stables are located behind the newly acquired property.
CBRE’s Nathan Mufale, David Minty and JJ Heng ran the campaign. They declined to comment.
Former bank
A former bank building which sits on the high-profile corner of Brunswick Street and Alexandra and Queens parades has hit the market.
Now a medical centre, the 460 Brunswick Street property was formerly the headquarters of veteran music promoter Andrew McManus’ McManus Entertainment.
Records show McManus sold it in 2011 to bookie Alan Eskander for $1.76 million.
Eskander sold his Betstar online betting business to Ladbrokes for $25 million in 2014 and has since established SportChamps, another bottomless pit for punters’ cash.
The building has a fresh five-year lease, with options, to the Fitzroy North Medical Clinic, which pays $221,598 a year.
There is a redevelopment clause in the lease giving any potential buyer options to build on the site. It’s on a large 624 sq m piece of land and comes with the chance to buy the neighbouring property at 8 Queens Parade – also owned by Eskander – which would increase the land area to 764 sq m.
Up the road at 26-56 Queens Parade, construction is well advanced on Gurner’s controversial residential development, Palladian. The state government’s Gasworks project will add another 1400 apartments to the area.
Fitzroys agents Chris Kombi, Chris James and Ben Liu have the 460 Brunswick Street listing and are expecting more than $3.7 million.
Hobby farm
Avid Property Group has snapped up a hobby farm in Clyde, in Melbourne’s south-east, in an off-market deal believed to be worth more than $20 million.
It’s quite the windfall for the family, which paid a mere $42,500 for the 8.09-hectare site in 1981.
But its new status inside the Clyde South Precinct Structure Plan turbocharged the property’s value.
The site at 40 Derricks Road is in one of the city’s most active land development corridors, where major developers have been building housing estates for many years now.
The Clyde South PSP is expected to deliver more than 13,000 homes.
“This new site directly neighbours one of our existing planned residential projects,” Avid Property Group’s chief executive Cameron Holt said.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Joe Kairouz, who handled negotiations with RPM Group’s Zaynoun Melhem, said the scarcity of privately held sites in the precinct had sharpened competition among developers.
“We’re seeing sustained demand from well-capitalised developers who are targeting large-format sites in PSP-aligned corridors, particularly those that offer clarity around future planning and the ability to deliver staged communities over the medium term,” Kairouz said.
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