Sotheby's buys on Queen Street, Woollahra from interior designer Ros Palmer

Jonathan ChancellorJuly 30, 2013

The Sotheby's premium art auction-house has bought on Queen Street. Woollahra spending $2.75 million on the former shop of the interior decorator, Ros Palmer.

The purchase of the 200 square metres of retail space reverses the recent trend of Woollahra's Queen Street fast becoming fashion central as its Dickensian antique dealers departed.

Ms Palmer has relocated to Launceston where she has an antiques shop in Longford, south of Launceston, called Parkview Antiques. 

Ros Palmer, who helped furnish the Lodge in Canberra, had initial $4 million plus hopes in 2010.

The 30 Queen Street premises (pictured in gallery above) in Sydney's eastern suburbs sold through Bill Bridges and Meagan Pokorny of Ballard Property Group.

The Sotheby's syndicate bought it through Woollahra Land Investments, which is directed by the art division Sotheby's Australian chairman and vice chairman, Geoffrey Smith and Samuel Cullen.

Sotheby's has been renting elsewhere on Queen Street for decades. 

The shop was last traded at $2.2 million in 2000. 

Last year the fashion designer Lisa Ho and ragtrader Philip Smouha sold their 380-square-metre retail premises in Queen Street, Woollahra for $3.9 million to a company called Flocolo 1 Pty Ltd, whose only shareholder is Charlotte MacKenzie, the bookseller wife of Adrian MacKenzie, the private equity entreprenuer.

The three-storey 1905 building (pictured above) with rear lane access has three separate lease spaces.

Pauline Goodyer from GoodyerDonnelley Real Estate persisted on the listing having initially offered it in 2007 with $6 million-plus hopes.

The 222-square-metre holding cost $4.5 million in 2004.

Featuring a handsome façade and impressively proportioned rooms with soaring patterned ceilings and superb period details, it spans three levels as well as a basement.

Lisa Ho had the ground floor retail outlet and the second floor hairdressing salon had been empty since last December.

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 in 2011.

Jonathan Chancellor

Jonathan Chancellor is one of Australia's most respected property journalists, having been at the top of the game since the early 1980s. Jonathan co-founded the property industry website Property Observer and has written for national and international publications.

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