Tiny quarter-acre car park to sell for $9m-plus
A Box Hill development site the same size as the quarter-acre block, once the centre of the great Australian homeowner dream, is set to top a whopping $9 million.
The 994sqm allotment at the corner of Edgar Rd and Whitehorse Rd is set to go from a carpark to a 15-storey tower with plans already approved.
The property at 813-823 Whitehorse Rd in the suburb’s Major Development Precinct hit the market in March, and has had interest from a range of local and international buyers, according to Savills director Nick Peden.
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“There’s been a bit of local and offshore interest. And we are expecting in excess of $9 million,” Peden says.
“And we have had some interest close to that. I’d be thinking that it will be wrapped up very soon.”
And, ironically, it’s tipped to end up in foreign hands.
With nothing similar on the market in the suburb’s Major Development Precinct, Peden says the block comes with a combination of scarcity and scope for building heights that would likely end up with an offshore developer claiming the title.
“Given the height you can get there and the quality of the location, it’s definitely high on the list for offshore buyers,” Peden says.
A render of the 15-storey tower proposed for 813-823 Whitehorse Rd, Box Hill.
The proposed development was designed by Bruce Henderson Architects, and will feature 89 apartments, with mostly two or three-bedroom floorplans, as well as retail spaces.
The site is one of the increasingly rare undeveloped addresses along Whitehorse Rd in Box Hill’s Major Development Precinct, which has had a bevy of towers added to its skyline in recent years.
Whitehorse City Councillor Blair Barker says the development itself has been approved at VCAT, after initially being objected to by the council.
The address, on the prominent corner of Elgar Rd and Whitehorse Rd, will be very prominent and anything built there very much in the public eye, Barker adds.
“The sight lines there are really important,” Barker says.
Past development in the precinct has met with varying responses from the community, with Mr Barker himself on record describing some as “alien, menacing dystopian and intrusive.
However, he says he is hopeful that developers are taking on that feedback and applying it when coming up with tower designs.
“You want buildings that attract people,” Barker says.
“I’m hoping the market and the developers will respond to the feedback that we are giving.”
This article from Leader Newspapers first appeared as “Box Hill carpark turned 15-storey apartment site to top $9 million”.
