Jimmy Barnes lists his Botany industrial investment: Title Tattle
There's always been bit of the working-class man in Jimmy Barnes. Not just in the gravelly voice, but also in the singer's taste for property.
But Barnes, who formed his band Cold Chisel on the industrial outskirts of Adelaide, has decided to offload his twin Botany industrial warehouse investment spaces.
The two warehouses in the Sydney industrial precinct have residential conversion potential given their residential 2b zoning.
They cost $2.3 million in 2009 when bought by Barnes and his wife, Jane.
Steve Pappas at Firmstone Properties Rosebery has the listing with a $3 million hopes.
The couple had engaged architects to start negotiations with the council for a multi-unit redevelopment.
The 1,470-square-metre Daniel Street holding was envisaged as potentially suitable for private premises for their extended entourage given their own residence has been in the neighbourhood since 2004 when they spent $1.6 million on a 490-square-metre holding that conveniently had a recording studio.
Recording studios aren't always included, but warehouses traditionally offer flexible floor plans, vaulted ceilings, timber trusses and high walls that encourage the imagination to soar.
They also offer open-plan living spaces that are usually alive with tactile and textured energy – blank spaces aplenty for contemporary artworks to be displayed with an ease not familiar to older homes.
And warehouses can be special internally without regard to their dull street presence.
As inner-city land values rose in the late 1970s and companies were tempted to move further out, the warehouse fad took off.
Celebrity manager Harry M. Miller was a pioneer of the trend. He made his home in Woolloomooloo after paying $122,000 for a 512-square-metre inner-city block.
Miller's three-storey warehouse was described by the international architecture photographer Tim Street-Porter as a contemporary palazzo with French-walled garden set into the busy urban landscape. It included an internal glass lift that whisked visitors from the foyer.
Miller left the warehouse with polo practice pit after 20 years, selling to the Melbourne recording supremo Michael Gudinski in 1999.
