Prime Oakleigh site could house eight-storey tower

Commercial agents Crabtree should know a bit about the office building and potential development site they’re set to auction in the heart of Oakleigh in Melbourne’s south-east.

After all, they’ve either owned or leased the building for most of the last three decades.

“When I started at Crabtrees back in 1989 they’d just moved into the building, so we were there for almost 30 years,” marketing agent Chris McKenzie says.

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“The Crabtree family bought the building and then in the early ’90s when the market tightened up they ended up selling it to one of our clients.”

“We’d been a tenant ever since.”

But the two-storey building at 2-4 Atherton Rd, on the edge of the suburb’s reinvigorated town centre, is set for a new future, with the site’s potential eight-storey height limit expected to see developers figure prominently among the interested buyers when it goes to auction on Friday, May 18.

The prime 585sqm corner site is zoned Commercial 1, and could be suited to residential apartments, strata offices, or both.

The site is at the heart of Oakleigh’s revitalised town centre.

“Obviously the council is really keen to support multi-level developments and that part of major activity structure plan allows for up to eight levels,” McKenzie says.

“The building has really had its day. It’s pretty old now and pretty rundown. You could put a tenant in there and sit on it for a while, but its highest and best use now is definitely a multi-use development, whether that be residential apartments or strata offices.”

McKenzie says he expects interest around the $4 million mark for the property, which enjoys a prominent position near popular arterial Warrigal Rd, as well as among Oakleigh’s cafe and retail precinct.

“The enquiry level has been very strong,” he says.

“We’re pitching it around the $4 million mark, which seems pretty reasonable compared to some of the other sites that have been sold in that precinct over the last 12 months.”

Back in the mid-’90s it was a bit of a ghost town. Most of the major tenants were pinched and ended up over at Chadstone (Shopping Centre), but it’s reinvented itself through the cafe and restaurant businesses and the locals really support it well. It’s an amazing little place.

The Atherton Rd building will be auctioned on-site at 1pm on Friday, May 18.