Businessman plans HQ and museum after buying Old Geelong Goal
Geelong businessman Dean Montgomery will spend more than $3 million to buy and carry out maintenance works on the Old Geelong Gaol after councillors agreed to sell the property on Tuesday night.
Councillors will sell the 1853 bluestone prison complex to Montgomery International Pty Ltd for $1,500,001.
The Geelong-based company owns several other historically significant buildings in western Victoria.
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Montgomery is the company’s sole shareholder and plans to locate its head office at the Myers St site, as well as providing commercial carparking.
As part of the sale, Montgomery has committed to keeping the gaol open to the public for at least 500 hours a year, preserving the complex as an interactive museum.
The old cellblock will remain an integral part of the Old Geelong Gaol.
The Geelong resident also owns Glenormiston College at Terang, the Fletcher Jones Factory and Gardens at Warrnambool and Geelong’s St Albans Stud.
Montgomery last year bought the landmark Dennys Lascelles woolstore in Brougham St and teamed up with Geelong firm Techne Development to launch an eight-storey office complex, Dennys Lascelles Tower.
His other prominent Geelong project was redeveloping the T&G Building into a Deakin University student residence.
The Old Geelong Gaol will be opened to the public for at least 500 hours each year.
Under the contract to buy the gaol, the company has agreed to carry out almost $1.6 million in maintenance works within the next three years.
It has also committed to allow the Lazarus Community Centre to remain a tenant in the Governors Residence, where it supports homeless people, until at least April 2022, and will honour Rotary International’s lease to April 2020 on parts of the property.
Mayor Bruce Hardwood says the sale is a great outcome for the community and the council.
“Since identifying the need to sell the gaol five years ago, today we are able to sell this asset to someone who has experience in maintaining historically significant buildings and who is keen to maintain the building as a destination of heritage significance for the community,” Cr Harwood says.
An internal area within the Old Geelong Gaol.
“The sale also releases some pressure on our budget as the gaol has been a very expensive property to retain.”
The Old Geelong Gaol held some of Victoria’s most notorious prisoners, including bushranger Captain Melville and Mark “Chopper” Read.
The last prisoners left the gaol in 1991, and the State Government sold the site to the council on a $360,000 interest-free loan that remains outstanding.
The council will ask the government to rollover that outstanding loan into a heritage fund so it can improve other assets, including Rippleside’s Osborne House.
This article from the Geelong Advertiser originally appeared as “Buyer plans museum and head office as old Geelong Gaol is sold”.
