AVI stays local after securing Fitzroy corner site

AVI stays local after securing Fitzroy corner site
Staff reporterDecember 7, 2020

A 1,100sqm Fitzroy corner building in Melbourne’s inner-north has been sold to international volunteering organisation AVI, which will move its headquarters to the building from nearby Kerr Street.

Fitzroys Director, David Bourke and Manager, Terence Yeh, together with Rodney Morley Real Estate’s Rodney Morley and Naomi Dorevitch, sold the 160 Johnston Street property under the hammer for $5.050 million.

It marked the first time the vendors, a private local family, had put the property to the market in half a century.

The 579sqm site is between the bustling Brunswick Street and Smith Street hospitality and lifestyle precincts, and has frontages of more than 20m to busy Johnston Street and more than 28m to Hertford Street.

It has a two-level office and showroom building with onsite parking, and traded with a holding income of $110,732 per annum.

Yeh said the property’s attractive Commercial 1 zoning saw strong enquiry from investors, owner occupiers and developers, with more than 120 enquiries received during the campaign and strong competition in front of a large crowd at auction.

In close collaboration with the Australian government, AVI - initially Australian Volunteers International - has been at the forefront of volunteering initiatives since sending the world’s first international volunteer to Jakarta in 1951.

Last year, it was selected to deliver to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s new Australian Volunteers program, which began at the start of this year, as part of a consortium with Cardno and The Whitelum Group.

Another not-for-profit agency has purchased an office building, this time in Fitzroy.

The deal leaves AVI in front from two property disposals in 2016 and April which banked a total of $15.1 million, former headquarters at 71-75 Argyle Street and 88 Kerr Street.

The property's Commercial 1 zoning (which would allow for the construction of apartments) generated more than 120 inquiries.

Editor's Picks