After 32 years of ownership and various battles with Council, Alamdo Holdings have sold a 2.27ha portion of their site in Chester Hill for $16.5m.
The property at 109 Orchard Rd, comprises one hectare of hard stand storage, together with a further 1.2ha site containing a 6,648sqm warehouse with freezer / coolroom storage and a fully fitted office area. The property is currently vacant.
Alamdo also owns an adjoining property at 1-15 Bennett Street which is separated from the Orchard Rd site by a stormwater channel. In 1998 and again in 2000, portions of the land, including one of the buildings, were briefly flooded causing approx $1.4m in damage to property.
Alamdo brought proceedings against the council in 2005, following Council's previous works to install a gross pollutant trap in the stormwater channel which was alleged to have contributed to the flooding. The Supreme Court sided with Alamdo and ordered the Council to install suitable abatements to prevent the land from flooding, however this was subsequently over-turned in the High Court following an appeal by Council who claimed that Alamdo was aware of flooding on the land prior to their acquisition in 1988.
In 2017, Alamdo Holdings then sought approval to rezone the entire 5.7ha site from IN2 Light Industrial to R4 High Density Residential and to amend the maximum height of building controls to 17 metres. Whilst the property adjoins the heavy industrial areas of Chester Hill, it is also surrounded on two sides by standard residential dwellings and a rezoning of the site was plausible. The proposal, which could have accommodated approx 390 units / townhouses, was referred to the Joint Regional Planning Panel but failed to gain support.
Alamdo appears to have decided to split the land holding and appointed JLL to run an off market process for the land. The purchaser, KON Holdings, expects to release the buildings and hold the property as an investment.
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