12-hectare Jack’s Magazine site up for lease

Victoria is offering a lease of up to 65 years for hotels or other commercial operators to take over the 12-hectare Jacks Magazine site on the edge of Melbourne’s Maribyrnong River.

In an unusual commercial real estate offering, agency Working Heritage is seeking expressions of interest for uses on the site, five kilometres north-west of the CBD, which was constructed in the late 1870s and served as the state’s largest gunpowder store.

It was decommissioned in the 1990s and planning controls now exclude residential development, but uses such as food and beverage could well be included on the site that houses heritage bluestone buildings with specially constructed blast mounts built around them.

In normal commercial terms, the sites would be expected to cost between $300 and $500 per square metre per year, but some allowance was likely for the heritage nature of the building, said Fitzroys agent Rick Berry.

“It’s not really a property play,” Mr Berry said. “This really is about returning the site to life and getting people in there and using it. We’re really casting the net as wide as we can.”

The challenge for authorities in Victoria is similar to that facing NSW as they redevelop a site such as the former HMAS Platypus naval base. Creating commercial hubs that can provide a local base for employment is crucial, but doing so viably within the bounds of historic and heritage-protected buildings can be difficult.

The site has notionally been divided into six precincts for future development, with existing historic buildings being used for hospitality, function or reception spaces or wine and spirits sales.

Part of the site could accommodate a 50 or 60-room hotel, built into the same shape as one of the triangular blast mounds, Mr Berry said.

“It could be a big long, Toblerone-shaped block with your rooms within that pyramid building,” he said. “They’ve said it may work. Everything has ‘potential’ in front of it.”

Other buildings, isolated within their own blast mounds, could potentially be used as office or rehearsal space or any other function requiring acoustic separation.