City mansion stands waiting

Marc Pallisco 3 January 2011

One of the few remaining historic mansions in Melbourne's grand St Kilda Road is for sale — but its fate — as a luxury home, or as an equally lavish office — now lies in the hands of whoever waves the biggest cheque.
The prominent Airlie mansion at 452 St Kilda Road, on the north-west corner of Arthur Street was once home to prime minister Stanley Bruce, whose National-Country coalition governed the country between 1923 and 1929.
Built in 1891, Airlie was eminent during when St Kilda Road was revered as the address of Melbourne's wealthiest aristocrats and where some of the city's most grandiose residential real estate was developed.
Most of those homes have been demolished in the past half century, making way for office buildings that are now among the cheapest in the city to buy or lease.
Increasingly they are being replaced with apartment towers.
Some historic mansions have remained around the precinct but, like Airlie, had their side and back yards sliced, diced, developed, subdivided and sold.
In June 2007, Queens Road developer Asian Pacific Building Corporation paid $12 million for the 452 St Kilda Road estate, which included a development permit for what was a car park, behind the mansion.
Airlie was previously the headquarters of the Royal District Nursing Service, and also the office of investor and developer Clement Lee, who owned the asset for a period.
On land behind Airlie, APBC has since developed the Blackman Hotel, an 18-level, 209-unit tower.
It also embarked on a lavish restoration of the mansion, and took the unusual step of marketing Airlie concurrently with commercial and residential agents targeting quite different types of buyers.
What are bedrooms to agency Kay & Burton, which is marketing the asset as a prestige home, are boardrooms to CB Richard Ellis, whose floor plan suggests a 700-square-metre luxury office that could attract corporate operators through to consulates.
The mansion is expected to fetch about $8 million for APBC, which is also selling retail investments at the ground floor of the Blackman Hotel (expected to fetch another $4 million) and the Kings Business Park in South Melbourne.
The business park has price expectations of about $110 million.
Around the corner, a consortium including Macquarie is planning to demolish the 107-year-old Avalon mansion at 70 Queens Road.
Avalon is one of the few surviving homes by prominent architect William Pitt, who also designed the Princes Theatre and Olderfleet buildings in town.
A 12-level, 91-unit apartment complex, Proximity, will be developed on that site.

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