Meriton, Crown vie for Sydney’s former Channel 9 site
Meriton and Crown are among the big-hitting Australian groups jockeying for the $200 million Nine Network head office site in Sydney that attracted early attention from superannuation fund-backed Cbus Property.
Singapore’s Frasers group, local billionaire developer Harry Triguboff’s Meriton, Iwan Sunito’s Crown and the listed Mirvac are said to be in the running to buy the Nine Network site in Willoughby from its Asian joint venture owners, who are asking about $200 million.
The vendors, Michael Jiang’s Lotus Capital and Hong Kong-based Euro Properties, paid $147 million for the residential site in 2015.
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Although Cbus Property looked at the site, it is understood not to be proceeding with a bid.
Selling agent Colliers International yesterday declined to disclose how many parties were bidding for the “masterplanned” approved site, but claims there has been an “overwhelming response”.
“Nearly all of the top-tier developers in the country, together with a broad range of mid-tier developers, have expressed strong interest in the site, most meeting directly with the architects, CHROFI, to receive a more fine-grained overview of the now approved masterplan,” Guillaume Volz of Colliers says.
“Given the gross undersupply of development in Willoughby and the critical shortage of supply coming on to the market in coming years, this is likely to be one of the largest commercial site sales in the country this year.”
Nine remains the tenant at the 2.9ha site, which has an approved masterplan allowing for the development of 460 apartments across 10 towers ranging from four to nine storeys.
The NSW government received thousands of submissions against the Willoughby project mostly relating to traffic generation and parking issues.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
