ProInvest have landed a deal with Chrisites, the owner of 100 Walker Street to acquire the building with a 6 year lease back.
The 14-storey office building was built in 1972 and was refurbished in mid-1994 and has net lettable area 10,788sqm. ProInvest will pay around $160m for the asset, equating to $14,831/sqm. This compares with last week's sale of 20 Berry Street by Yuhu for $113m or just $11,712/sqm. The Walker Street site does however hold additional development potential.
The site has an area of approx 1,375sqm and under the North Sydney LEP is permitted to be built to a height of 227m (c.65 levels). The property sits to the east of the Winton project currently behind developed for Channel 9 and alongside a site that Stockland have recently consolidated for a future office building.
Pro-invest is an asset manager and investment firm which was established in 2010 by Ronald Barrott. With close to AUD $2 billion assets under management, ProInvest have become one of the largest hotel investment platforms in Australasia.
In Australia, Pro-invest partnered with InterContinental Hotels Group to develop Holiday Inn Express hotels in Australasia. In 2016, it opened Australia’s first Holiday Inn Express in Sydney’s Macquarie Park. This successful launch helped Pro-invest raise $300 million to develop more hotels and build its brand in the country. Pro-invest went on to open three more Holiday Inn Express hotels, in Brisbane, Adelaide and Newcastle. As Barrott points out, the firm has built significant business in just a short period of time. “We have more than 633 rooms operational today,” he says. “In addition, we are on schedule with eight more hotels under construction, in Brisbane, two in Melbourne, one in Queenstown, two in Auckland CBD and two in Sydney. Our target is to add 5000 rooms into the Australian hospitality industry within the next five years.”
ProInvest may look to develop a Hotel on the North Sydney site as part of a mixed use development at some stage in the future, however a 6 year leaseback deal to Christie's will delay any redevelopment plans for the site. Next door to the site, Billbergia are currently developing a mixed use Hotel and Office Building for the Ascot hotel group. Ascott recently announced the acquisition of the Hotel component of 88 Walker Street for around $202m.
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