Acting under instructions from the Banyule City Council, Colliers International is set to launch a new campaign; the Banksia Village site in the emerging urban renewal suburb of Bellfield.
Banksia Village represents a scarce opportunity for developers to secure a de-risked, island development site on the border of Ivanhoe.
Colliers International’s Hamish Burgess, Joe Kairouz and Robert Papaleo have been appointed by Council to run an Expression of Interest (EOI) campaign to identify prospective developers to continue Council’s long-term plan of redeveloping the third of three former school sites it purchased from the State Government in 2012.
“As a suburb, Bellfield has until recently been hidden in plain sight despite its outstanding location attributes as indicated by its shared border with Ivanhoe and the Darebin Creek parklands,” Mr. Papaleo said.
“Over the past decade, the suburb’s large house blocks have increasingly attracted the interest of townhouse developers, as well as aspirational young families priced out of the adjoining suburbs where median house prices are at a premium of more than 70%. The changing profile of entrants to the Bellfield market will continue to drive the positive re-rating of Bellfield.”
New purchasers are being attracted by the suburb’s proximity to major employment and activity hubs including La Trobe University, Austin Hospital and Heidelberg Health Precinct as well as Northland.
“Banksia Village is located within the La Trobe National Economic and Innovation Cluster and is comprised of four individual parcels that Council have consolidated to create this outstanding development opportunity,” Mr Burgess said.
“The purchasers of Banksia Village, or its individual sites, will have the opportunity to extend the foundation work done by Council to deliver an innovative and integrated residential project that will leverage the recent success of nearby major medium density schemes and urban renewal initiatives.”
Colliers International expects that the combination of the site’s attributes and the Council-led process, which has already substantially de-risked the site by its pending rezoning, will be particularly appealing to developers in current market conditions.
“More and more over the past 3 years we have seen the mandates of developers include large medium-density sites, zoned Residential Growth in emerging suburbs. Banksia Village clearly ticks all of these boxes” Mr. Kairouz said.
Mr. Papaleo noted that “A significant benefit of this opportunity to the purchaser is that it will allow collaboration with a committed Council who have already created a planning framework that is both certain and flexible. Importantly, Banyule have a successful track record in acting as both vendor and responsible authority that has led to outstanding development outcomes.”
Council’s overall Bellfield renewal initiative will include redevelopment of the former Banksia La Trobe Secondary College site and other council-owned land, as well as the creation of a new Community Hub including the relocated Community Centre and a social housing project on land adjoining Banksia Village. The planning scheme amendment to deliver this outcome is now awaiting Ministerial approval and Council endorsed and accepted the Planning Panel’s April 2020 report.
The EOI will close 9 June 2020 - view the listing here
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