Lowy family makes $1.3 million in Woolloomooloo garage sale

This Woolloomooloo motor mechanic workshop’s humble appearance belies its noteworthy company ownership.

Until last month the inner-city Sydney workshop – and a nearby warehouse – were within the real estate portfolio of the billionaire Lowy family’s international property conglomerate, the Westfield Holdings group.

The 215-square-metre workshop was sold for $1.3 million and the 400-square-metre two-level warehouse fetched $2,675,000 through Ray White Commercial Eastern Suburbs agents Grant Whiteman and Stephen McMorrow.

The Lowy family has a preference to hold onto its assets - the two properties were purchased in the early 1970s – the warehouse costing just $350,000 when bought through a company named Eastfield Pty Ltd.

Frank Lowy and John Saunders were the business partners, creating Westfield Development Corporation through the development of a shopping centre at Blacktown in Sydney's western suburbs.

Over 30 years, Lowy and Saunders developed shopping centres across Australia and the United States until Saunders sold his interests in 1987, and then the Lowy family expanded the company’s reach to New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Lowy and Saunders had built the company headquarters at 100 William Street, Sydney,  just around the corner from the two recently sold Woolloomooloo properties.

In the early 1970s the precinct was emerging as a development hotspot evidenced in 1972 when Sid Londish spent about $20 million buying Woolloomooloo terrace slums and proposed a $400 million redevelopment.

By 1974 after two years of green bans, Londish’s backers withdrew, forcing Londish’s company Regional Holdings to abandon the ambitious project.

Londish had an earlier association with Woolloomooloo with the Londish family's Woolloomooloo engineering workshop, which they closed two years after Prime Minister Robert Menzies scrapped the engineering depreciation allowance in 1950.

Westfield is due to vacate 100 William Street, East Sydney in the next 12 months to 18 months, with plans to move into new offices at its $2.68 billion Westfield Sydney complex on Pitt Street Mall.

Westfield's main lease in east Sydney expired at the end of June this year. 

Westfield Towers was sold to the Kah Motor Company in 1996 by the Commonwealth Funds Management for $31.98 million, adding to its $22 million purchase in 1993 of the Boulevard Hotel next door.