Fashion royalty boosts Queen Street's leasing pedigree
The queen of Australian fashion Collette Dinnigan has given Woollahra's burgeoning fashion precinct a fillip since the opening of her store on the Queen Street retail strip.
With her many dress lines and an ever-growing bridal business, Dinnigan took the retail space late last year – paying $195,000 a year in rent for the 130-square-metre ground-floor premises.
The Sydney suburb of Woollahra’s prestige shopping precinct’s most recent sale was in this week, mid-June 2011, when the Howell and Howell antique premises fetched $4.25 million post auction through Richardson and Wrench agent Ben Vaughan in conjunction with Laing and Simmons agent John Knott.
The Howell shop has been bought by Alasdair MacLeod and his wife, Prudence, the eldest child of Rupert and Anna Murdoch, who beat off two other parties who had sought extended settlement terms.
Tenants are now being sought.
The Howells, Frank and Georgina, are off to the United States to be closer to family members.
It had last traded at $2,001,000 in 2000. The 320-square- metre premises sits on a 203-square-metre block. Its estimated rental was given as between $200,000 and $240,000 a year.
Their departure heightens the strip’s shift away from antiques.
Once replete with regency furniture, Louis XV commodes and long-case clocks, Woollahra now has a who's-who of fashion within a two-kilometre radius: Sass & Bide, Ksubi, Zimmermann, Camilla and Marc, Willow, Lisa Ho, Robby Ingham, Herringbone, Mother Baby Child, Saba, Quincy, John Cavill, Brunello Cucinelli, M.J. Bale, Scanlan & Theodore, Ginger & Smart and Kate Sylvester.
Few are like Akira Isogawa, who has been on Queen Street since 1994. It was 1986 when he arrived in Sydney from Japan, speaking no English, on a working holiday visa, and one of his first jobs was as a kitchen hand in a nearby Queen Street brasserie. He then studied at the Dress Design Studio of East Sydney Tech.
Dinnigan’s rental space became available following the departure to Redfern of Martyn Cook, the street's most ubiquitous antique dealer for the past 20 years. The premises sold at $4.6 million (exclusive of GST) to the discretionary investment trust Wyelba Pty Ltd, which is associated with the MacLeods, last year.
It was sold by the Roche family of Adelaide, who paid $1.02 million in 1990.
The nearby Queen Street shop of the late antiques dealer William Bradshaw was tenanted to Jacadi, the children's clothing store from Paris, following its $2.7 million sale.
Queen Street’s current listings include a retail showroom and private residence combined in a semi-attached mixed use through Ben Collier and James Dack at McGrath Estate Agents. Set to the north of Ocean Avenue, the property comes with approval for additional floor space and a double garage.
The street’s yields mostly range between 3% and 5%.
