Paul Little's 493-square-metre site at 38-40 Claremont Street, once home to an office-warehouse, was bought for $2.6 million in 2007 from liquidators, when the Forrest Hill precinct around the school was still in the early stages of its shift from light industrial to high-rise apartment towers. A plan for a 19-storey apartment tower was knocked back in 2012, partly because it came without car parking. The site held a hotel permit in 2022 and now has plans for student accommodation. Allard Shelton agents Joseph Walton and Ben Tremellen have the listing.
The neighbour at 24-26 Claremont Street sold last year to Pellicano Living, the build-to-rent arm of the Pellicano Group, for $7 million. At the end of the street, construction has started on Wattletree's 16-storey South Yarra House, where seven of 53 apartments remain for sale.
In Bulleen, the Manningham Hotel, once named The Sentimental Bloke and once boasting what was said to be the longest bar in the southern hemisphere, is for sale with vacant possession. The 2.79-hectare site sits next to the playing fields of Marcellin and Trinity schools and currently overlooks the North East Link construction site. It is in a residential growth zone where the new ring road extension meets the Eastern Freeway in a tunnel under the Yarra River and the Bulleen billabongs; access is currently tricky, and gaming revenue is down. The pub's 100 machines returned $2.6 million a year, compared with $3.03 million in 2024-25. Knight Frank agents Tom Ryan, Paul Lillis and Nick Bisset are running an expression-of-interest campaign, with the offering pitched more as a development site than a hospitality opportunity. Endeavour has flagged plans to revamp pubs that need a fresh face, but it looks like The Bloke is not getting the makeover. The pub is one of a core group of hotels owned by Bruandwo, the company that was poured into ALH in the early 2000s and then into Endeavour Group.
O'Connell's Hotel in South Melbourne, one of the first big gastro pubs from the 1990s, is also on the market with a price tag of more than $8 million after recently celebrating its 150th anniversary. The Kurtulus family bought the freehold in 2012 for $3.5 million. HTL agents George Iliopulos and Scott Callow have the listing.
In Albert Park, the old post office at 87-89 Dundas Place, occupied by grocer Gum Tree Good Food since 2012, goes to auction on December 4 with an expected price above $5 million. Gum Tree pays $327,818 a year in rent under a new seven-year lease with two seven-year options. Two doors down, the former bank branch at 95-97 Dundas Place, an art deco building leased to Woolworths, is understood to have sold last month for about $7.2 million to a local investor after six bids.
The Mushroom Group's Albert Park headquarters at 9 Dundas Lane is on the market after four decades of ownership, with the record company moving to the CBD after 46 years in the 1089-square-metre warehouse. Stonebridge agents ran the expressions-of-interest campaign and are in negotiations; the building is expected to fetch well over its $6.8 million quote.
Elsewhere, a Guzman y Gomez outlet under construction in Wyndham Vale sold off-market for $6.6 million with a 20-year lease paying $352,000 a year; the old Domenic's Restaurant in Highett sold to self-storage newcomer Keepers for $6.2 million; and the former Barbarino's building in Doncaster, home to the Plume Chinese restaurant for 20 years, sold to the Hometown Asian Supermarket chain at an undisclosed price expected around $10 million.