Hollywood animation guru buys $13m ice cream warehouse
Happy Feet creator, Zareh Nalbandian, who sold his animation studio Animal Logic to Netflix last year for more than $700m, has emerged as the $13.2 million buyer of Camperdown’s former Ice Cream Factory warehouse conversion.
Happy Feet creator Zareh Nalbandian, who sold his animation studio Animal Logic to Netflix last year for around $700m, has emerged as the $13.2m buyer of Camperdown’s former ice cream warehouse conversion.
His intentions after the off-market acquisition are not known, but it has 1250sq m of gross floor space, with ceiling heights of 13m.
Nalbandian is the latest in a who’s who of owners of the Australia St warehouse, which was offloaded by Bitcoin entrepreneur Kain Warwick.
Warwick bought it for $12m in 2021 from the property developer Theo Onsiforou, who had paid $5.75m in 2015 and spent $1m on its upgrade.
BresicWhitney’s Shannan Whitney once countenanced it could easily become a luxury home.
Happy Feet creator Zareh Nalbandian has spent $13.2m on a former ice cream warehouse conversion in Camperdown
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According to PropTrack, the median home price in Camperdown is $1.655m, down 14 per cent over the last 12 months.
The building was the longtime manufacturing plant for Dairy Bell ice cream until its 2015 closure after its sale to Paul Little, the Melbourne businessman.
Nalbandian, who has been based in Longueville for over two decades, has been busy spending his windfall.
There was a $3.9m purchase on King St, Newtown; and Nalbandian, who has also worked on The Matrix, and Peter Rabbit, recently spent $US6.2m on a modern canal-front home in Venice, Los Angeles.
The popularity of Sydney warehouses will be tested with a Lilyfield offering.
Renovation queen Cherie Barber wants $9m for the converted Lilyfield residential warehouse she bought from comedian Merrick Watts for $6m in 2020. It was the lolly factory, Oh Boy Candy Company.
The latest marketing suggests not much has changed since Watts commissioned the architect Virginia Kerridge.
The building has had a string of famous owners.
Interiors expert Juliet Ashworth and her partner Richard Whalley recently fronted a syndicate that sold a commercial Alexandria warehouse to Carla Zampatti’s daughter, fashion designer Bianca Spender, for $7.5m, having bought it for $6.03m in early 2021.
The Henderson Rd property, set on 435sq m, is a double-brick, three-storey warehouse.
Two years ago, TV producer Andrew Denton and his broadcaster wife Jennifer Bryne sold their Chippendale office warehouse for $10m.
The TV power couple had secured the Meagher St holding in 2007 for $2.1m.
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