Opportunity Knox for prime Double Bay retail space listed for first time in 25 years
The Knox Street, Double Bay retail premises with the ANZ Bank as its major tenant since the late 1980s has been listed for sale.
It’s been listed by the executors of Louis Kennedy, the entrepreneurial jeweller who sold diamonds to the Packers and watches to the Rivkins, some three years after his death in 2008 aged 83.
Once known as Kennedy House, it has two shops and six commercial suites.
Its current net annual passing incoming is given as $767,000.
There is a net letable area of 784 square metres on its 474-square-metre holding.
Tony Anderson and Lindsay Sturrock from Cushman & Wakefield have it listed for November 29 auction with $8 million plus hopes.
For many years it served as the retail headquarters of L.K. Jewellery, which proudly introduced glomesh handbags to Australia.
In 1978 the property was leased to Mark Foys Pty Ltd. The ANZ lease began in 1988 at $420,000 a year.
The premises are owned by Kennedy Holdings and Property Management Pty Ltd in partnership with Andale Nominees Pty Ltd, which took equity in 1988.
A 2010 Supreme Court dispute indicated the estate of Louis Kennedy was worth $5.5 million, and after deduction of the costs of the court proceedings, about $5 million.
It suggested the major assets of the estate were a half-share in a commercial property and a share in a jewellery business.
L.K. Jewellery’s former retail space was an elegant little establishment fitted out in black lacquer and bird's-eye maple.
Its premises had a brazen robbery during a busy Saturday in 1994.
There was a stolen car double-parked outside LK Jewellery and three men leapt out, brandishing an axe and a couple of tomahawks.
The thieves, who smashed the window with the axe, made off with eight Rolexes, two bracelets and two rings – a haul worth about $135,000.
L.K. Jewellery still has an office upstairs in the premises.
