Coles selling near new Melton shopping centre
EXCLUSIVE
Coles Group Property Developments has found a purchaser for another recently completed shopping centre – this time at Cobblebank, in the Melton growth corridor.
The two year old Cobblebank Village on 2.09 hectares at 210 Ferris Road is trading to a syndicate including venture capitalist Jeffrey Friedmann – who in 2021 made headlines banking US$6.1m selling a Beverley Hills mansion he bought from Britney Spears nine years earlier for US$4.6m before renovating.
Erdigroup Hotels chairman Jeffrey Pinch is one of the other three directors of the Cobblebank buying entity, Looop Properties Pty Ltd.
The purchase price is speculated to be c$45m.
The off-market deal, which hasn’t settled, comes five weeks since CGPD offloaded its c2018 Middle Camberwell outlet, with two specialty stores and a three level basement car park, for $37m – a 4.4pc yield.
In March meanwhile it outlaid c$80m for a collection of retail assets including a supermarket it occupied for decades, in Balaclava, six kilometres south east of Melbourne’s CBD.
Cobblebank Village
Costing a speculated $25m to complete, Cobblebank Village contains 18 specialty stores, a first floor gym and 317 car parks.
The Coles tenancy is new generation with pick-and-mix bars for deserts, including gelato and macarons, and pet food, and a deli with an expanded range of imported products (story continues below).
The site sits between the Cobblebank train station, which opened in 2019, and the $900m Melton Hospital, due for completion in 2029.
It also neighbours a 7.5ha block Australian Unity purchased last week for $15m with plans for a private hospital with lower level retail.
Melton keeps growing
Cobblebank, 34 kilometres west of Melbourne’s CBD, was one of 11 suburbs the City of Melton gazetted in 2017 so as to not overweight the population of Melton South, Plumpton and Rockbank.
The other precincts, where farms are being progressively replaced, are Aintree, Bonnie Brook, Deanside, Fieldstone, Fraser Rise, Harkness, Grangefields, Strathtulloh, Thornhill Park and Weir Views.
Elsewhere in the area, in 2021, a Coles-backed shopping centre on 1.36ha opposite Melton train station sold for $43m, a significant rise on the ($10.5m) price the vendor paid eight years earlier before renovating.
McDonald’s also opened its 1000th Australian restaurant, at Weir Views, in 2020 while, last April hardware giant Bowens bought a 4.9ha Cobblebank site for a store.
As part of developing Cobblebank Village, Coles donated $5000 to the nearby Springside Primary School to construct a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden.
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