Tiny Fintona Girls School misses chance to buy adjoining property
The exclusive Fintona Girls School in Balwyn has missed out on the opportunity to expand its tiny campus by buying a high-profile adjoining property that was offered with a controversial permit objected to by hundreds of local residents, including many of its parent body.
The 7 Cherry Road, Balwyn, property sold to a Chinese developer last week for $6.01 million – a substantial rise on the $2.6 million the vendor paid in 2013 before obtaining permission to replace the single home with a three level-apartment complex.
In a lush tree-lined pocket, nine kilometres east of Melbourne, the 1593-square-metre parcel is opposite the Balwyn Reserve and near several other prestigious private schools, including Camberwell Grammar and Genazzano FJC College.
An artist’s impression of the controversial apartment project for the site.
It is also one of only a few dwellings to abut Fintona Girls School, a small college with an annual tuition rate of nearly $20,000 for pre-Prep students.
It is unknown whether Fintona was in the mix of prospective purchasers. Principal Suzy Chandler declined to respond to questions about the sale when contacted. Fintona’s alumni includes activist and politician Beryl Beaurepaire, environmentalist Dr Helen Caldicott and former Victorian Liberal frontbencher Andrea Coote.
The median price for a three-bedroom unit in the area is $1,165,000, according to Domain Group data, while the median house price is more than $2 million.
The Cherry Road property was marketed by agencies CBRE and Fletchers as “undoubtedly the best permit-approved Balwyn site presented to the market in some years”.
It is also one of the highest profile – with the apartment proposal generating more than 450 objections, including that “perverted” residents could overlook children’s playgrounds.
Objectors also focused on the scale and character of the project, describing the proposal as “catastrophic and destructive to the happiness and welbeing of those living in the community”.
The apartment plan came shortly after the Andrews state government introduced the Recognising Objectors Bill, which was tabled in 2015 to “give the community a voice” in controversial planning decisions.
A marketing image of the site, showing its relationship to the school. Photo: Supplied
But despite admitting “a significant community response” was generated, the planning authority –the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal – approved an amended proposal allowing for 16 dwellings, instead of 18.
Member Michael Deidun said concerns about the nature of the people who would live in the complex were not legitimate for the tribunal.
The tribunal said the objections centred around the community’s dislike of medium-density developments in the low-rise area.
“The fear of, or resistance to that change, is not a significant social effect,” Mr Deidun said, adding that 16 apartments could not be equated “to the social effect of a gaming facility or brothel in a prominent location to people wishing to avoid such temptation”.
In recent years private schools have purchased sites abutting their campuses, particular when colleges, like Fintona, are small.
In 2014 Genazzano FJC paid Telstra more than $1.5 million for a former telephone exchange abutting its Cotham Road campus, and which was being marketed to residential developers.
In 2010, in Moonee Ponds, Lowther Hall paid $3.2 million for the former Hillebrands tennis training centre at 20 Park Street, near its Essendon campus (it sold the 2000-square-metre block to an apartment developer a few years later after the school council decided the block, a few hundred metres from its main campus, was too far away for students to travel to). Lowther Hall is also known to purchase strategic sites abutting its Leslie Road campus.
The Balwyn site was marketed by Julian White, David Minty and Scott Orchard, of CBRE, with Fletchers director Rob Fletcher.
