Douglas Menzies Chambers sells for $23m in Melbourne CBD
The prime corner site in Melbourne's legal heartland has been secured by an unknown owner-occupier, with Colliers confirming the $23m sale of Douglas Menzies Chambers, located at 180 William St opposite the Supreme Court of Victoria.
The 12-level building was owned and occupied by Barristers Chambers Limited since 1992, and had not been publicly offered in over three decades.
AFL icon's family farewells home after 115 yrs
Colliers Melbourne's Matt Stagg, Nick Garoni and Yvonne Zhou led the campaign, which attracted significant buyer interest from both owner-occupiers and investors.
'The campaign generated deep purchaser demand with more than 90 enquiries, 30 inspections and seven competitive offers,' Mr Garoni said.
'Owner-occupiers and experienced investors recognise the Melbourne CBD office market represents excellent value at this point of the cycle.'
The building sits on a 395sq m corner site at William and Little Bourke streets and enjoys panoramic views over the heritage-listed Supreme Court, founded in 1852.
Its location also places it within walking distance of the County, Magistrates' and Federal Courts, making it one of the most strategically positioned assets in the Legal Precinct.
Developed in the early 1970s following the demolition of the Four Courts Hotel, the property was named in honour of Sir Douglas Menzies, a High Court judge appointed in 1958.
It includes 12 levels of commercial office space with dual frontages, naming and signage rights, and strong future potential for refurbishment or repositioning.
The sale follows Barristers Chambers Limited's $176m acquisition of 200 Queen St in 2024 from Charter Hall. The group now occupies several floors within the tower.
Head of Colliers Investment Services Victoria Matt Stagg said commercial owner-occupiers such as Barristers Chambers are capitalising upon institutional investors divesting high quality buildings such as 200 Queen St to upgrade their accommodation.
'This provides opportunities for other businesses to acquire tightly held buildings in prime locations such as 180 William Street,' Mr Stagg said.
Mr Stagg said the rarity of the location couldn't be overstated.
'In terms of an opportunity directly opposite the Supreme Court, it's incredibly tightly held,' he said.
'That specific location is exceptionally rare. The last time a site like this changed hands was when the Barristers' Chambers bought their building in 1992.'
While the buyer has not been named, Mr Stagg confirmed they plan to make the building their long-term base.
'They're an owner-occupier, and over the next year they'll progressively move the majority of their business into the premises,' he said.
'They were extremely happy. Like the Barristers' Chambers, they're viewing this as a long-term hold.
'They see real value in the location and have no intention of leaving any time soon.'
Mr Garoni added that the long-term prospects for the CBD remained strong, particularly in precincts underpinned by legal and government activity.
'There is strong capital growth potential from the current historically low base, particularly for properties in strategic locations underpinned by industries such as the Legal Precinct, Collins Street and Bourke Street Financial Precinct and East End Government precinct,' he said.
Mr Stagg said broader market confidence was returning in 2025, particularly among seasoned investors and savvy owner-occupiers.
'In the Melbourne CBD, particularly over the past six months, we've seen a real pick-up in activity,' he said.
'A lot of the buyers have been experienced local investors who recognise how strong the capital growth potential is over the next five years. They're taking a position now while the value is compelling.'
'And for owner-occupiers like this buyer, or like Barristers' Chambers at 200 Queen St, it's about upgrading their accommodation while the timing's right.'
He added that upcoming infrastructure would help supercharge that trend.
'The Melbourne Metro Tunnel is scheduled to open at the end of this year and will dramatically improve connectivity, particularly along Swanston Street, the Bourke Street Mall, and that whole corridor,' Mr Stagg said.
'It'll make the CBD much easier to navigate and bring more people back into the heart of the city.
'We do expect it to accelerate the recovery and bring in more interstate — and possibly international, investor attention as well.'
And the momentum isn't slowing.
'Following this sale, we're working on a couple of select, high-profile sites that are set to come to market soon,' he said.
'I can't say too much just yet, but there's certainly more activity to come.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
44 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Consumer confidence soars on the latest RBA move on rates
A surprising group of Australians are feeling better about their personal finances and the broader economy after the Reserve Bank's August rate cut gave households a much-needed confidence boost. The latest Westpac-Melbourne Institute survey showed consumer sentiment jumped 5.7 per cent to 98.5 in August. This was its highest level in nearly four years. A score of 100 or better suggests Australians are optimistic about the future. But the soaring consumer sentiment is not coming from the group of people you would expect to benefit from lower rates. Westpac head of Australian macro-forecasting Matthew Hassan said overall consumers were feeling better about cost of living. 'Interestingly, the gains are not confined to or even being led by the mortgage belt, the section of consumers that stand to benefit most directly from lower interest rates,' he said. 'Some of the strongest improvements in the August month were among renters, suggesting that easing cost-of-living pressures – including slower growth in rents – has also been a positive.' Mr Hassan said the sharp pick up in consumer sentiment came just days after the RBA lowered the official cash rate by 25 basis points to 3.60 per cent. 'The RBA's forecasts also imply that rates will likely need to be a little lower to keep the economy on track, a point the RBA governor highlighted in the post-decision press conference' he said. 'That looks to have reinforced consumer expectations that mortgage interest rates are headed lower, giving a broadbased boost to sentiment.' It was the third interest rate cut of the cycle, with cash-strapped mortgage holders getting 75 basis points of rate relief since February. Consumer sentiment first ticked up after the income tax cuts in the middle of last year and steadily rose on the back of each RBA rate cut. Although there was a pause in sentiment in April when Australians feared the worst when US President Donald Trump announced his tariff policy The rise was broadbased, with all five measures Westpac-Melbourne Institute lifted over the month. The biggest lift was consumers feeling about their personal finances. The 'family finances vs. a year ago' sub-index surged 6.2 per cent in August to 84.2, still a pessimistic read but only marginally below the long-run average of 88, while expectations about the 'family finances over the next 12 months' are up 5.4 per cent to 106.8. Australians are also starting to feel optimistic about making big purchases. The 'time to buy a major item' sub-index jumped to optimistic in the month of August as crossing the 100 mark. The RBA rate cut gave a substantial boost to housing-related sentiment. The 'time to buy a dwelling' index jumped 10.5 per cent to 97.8, a new four-year high and up 37 per cent on a year ago, albeit still well below the historic rate of 120. Mr Hassan said the long run of consumer pessimism may finally be coming to an end, although he pointed out households should not expect back-to-back rate cuts. 'Further easing will likely be needed to sustain gains,' he said. However, he said the RBA did not need to rush to cut rates further. 'Inflation is inside the RBA's target range and likely to stay there but the unemployment rate is still low by historical standards,' he said. 'We expect the board to take things meeting by meeting and respond to the flow of data as it comes in.' The RBA monetary policy board next meets on September 29-30.
News.com.au
44 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Drill to Kill: How Ballard plans to grow its already bountiful Mt Ida gold project
WA's gold fields have plenty more large scale discoveries to be made With Ballard Mining's advanced 930,000oz Baldock deposit and 26km of largely unexplored greenstone, its Mt Ida project has potential to upsize 130,000m of drilling planned after $30m IPO and spinoff from lithium junior Delta Lithium Is the Western Australia's gold scene too drilled out for world class discoveries, or is that fear just a crisis of imagination? Recent developments in WA's gold sector show discoveries can deliver over and over again. De Grey Mining's 11.2Moz Hemi gold discovery near Port Hedland put the cat among the pigeons. And since that 2020 find, which turned the minnow into a $6bn takeover prey for Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST), well-trodden turf across the state has delivered revelations. Spectrum Metals, Musgrave Minerals and Spartan Resources have all posted high-grade gold discoveries in the Mid West that sit within the portfolio of Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS). Spartan's 2.3Moz Never Never and Pepper deposits were located just 1km from its processing plant in the mature Dalgaranga gold field. Former De Grey chair Simon Lill, now the chair of WA gold explorers Ballard Mining (ASX:BM1) and Kairos Minerals (ASX:KAI), says the geos at De Grey were confident another orebody of the scale of Hemi is lurking somewhere in the WA outback. "It's amazing that most of Australia's still under cover, really. And as they're getting better at techniques of looking beneath the cover they're starting to find more materials," he said at the Diggers and Dealers mining forum in Kalgoorlie this month. Other mines which once had short lives have been shown to go on, seemingly, forever – think Northern Star's Super Pit, Jundee and Carosue Dam, Ramelius' Checkers, Catalyst Metals' (ASX:CYL) Plutonic and Westgold Resources ' (ASX:WGX) Big Bell. Those success stories open a tantalising window into a possible future for the ASX's newest WA gold explorer Ballard and its 1.1Moz Mt Ida gold project. Mt Ida includes 930,000oz at 4.1g/t alone at the Baldock deposit, a potential open pit that forms the basis of a future mining hub, drilled before the company's spin-off from Delta Lithium (ASX:DLI). "We've got 1Moz here already without really trying, and it's still just scratching the surface, so who knows how big that can become," Lill said. "Some of the discoveries from the '80s that Ed Eshuys was involved with, they're still mining. "At the time, they got up and operating on a seven-year mine life. They're still operating." The potential Tasked with bringing that vision to life is managing director Paul Brennan, a veteran of WA's Goldfields. He was the general manager of Carosue Dam for Saracen Mineral Holdings when the mine poured its millionth ounce of gold. It's still going strong eight years on. "One of my favourite sayings is the best spot to find a new mine is at an existing mine," Brennan said. "When I was there, we went through this organic shift from open pit mining to underground mining. "And then once we actually got underground and established some underground diamond drill positions, we were able to drill from a position that was favourable to the resource rather than drilling Hail Mary's from surface, which are very expensive. "Those orebodies just continue to grow. "Karari and (Whirling) Dervish still underpin Carosue Dam's production." Ballard is uniquely placed to make those additional discoveries early. Armed with $30m in fresh capital from its July IPO, the high-powered junior is already trading well above the offer price at 45c and is using that cash to fund two distinct drill drives. Newly listed and with four rigs already on the ground, around 100km west of the Goldfields town of Leonora, one is an 80,000m program to infill and expand Baldock and the other a 50,000m program to make new discoveries across 26km of largely untested greenstone hosted shear zones. "Baldock, we've only really drilled it down to 350 metres, so there's certainly opportunity to extend that at depth," Brennan said. "But we want to hunt it along strike first just to find the edges. " And then secondly, the exploration drilling – this is probably a little bit different from Saracen in that there's a genuine underexplored nature at Mount Ida, 26 kilometres of prospective greenstone with an average drill hole depth of 40 metres. "Something like only 670 holes have been drilled at Mount Ida since Baldock was discovered in 2001." Majors on board The nature of Ballard's journey to the ASX means it has a uniquely powerful register for a new explorer. Delta itself controls around 46% of the stock, with legacy DLI investors Hancock Prospecting and Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) rounding out the top 3. Japanese trading house Idemitsu is there as well, along with well known Aussie funds Nero Resources Fund, Precision Funds Management and Argonaut, and former Northern Star Resources boss Bill Beament. International instos IFM and 1832 Asset Management are on board as well, a huge fillip for Ballard when it does come time to raise capital to develop the Baldock mine. "We've been very fortunate to attract that calibre (of investor) and knowing that they'll be there in a couple of years' time when we hopefully do look to build it. You'd expect there to be supportive shareholders," Brennan said. Exploration focus Ballard sits in an enviable position, and stands as a logical M&A prospect either in concert with the privately owned Aurenne Group's Mt Ida project just 6km to the south or a larger player further a field like Ora Banda (ASX:OBM) or Genesis Minerals (ASX:GMD). But Brennan says the focus is not on an endgame. "We're all friends, we all know each other. There'll be just ongoing casual chats in that space ... as good neighbours do. But you've got to be in control of your own destiny. Hope is not a strategy," he said. Rather, the big prize is seeing how substantial Ballard can make its Mt Ida deposits, and what might be lurking at up to 20 prospects already identified across the vast tract of greenstone under the company's control. Alongside its strong register, Ballard's battle hardened board brings with it a wealth of experience operating in WA's gold sector. With Brennan is non-exec chair Lill, fresh from his success at De Grey, along with former Ramelius Resources CFO Tim Manners as finance director and Delta MD James Croser as a non-executive director. The other non-exec director, and one of two independent directors with Lill, is Stuart Mathews, recently retired from his role as Australasian head of Gold Fields, one of the world's biggest gold miners. "He's used to looking at big camp-scale projects, big exploration budgets," Brennan said. "Our two independent non-execs, they're both suggesting that we just need to understand how big this thing is or potentially could be, before we start betting down flow sheets and production rates and start talking about feasibility studies." Drill to kill Brennan says the aim is to "drill to kill". "Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago, you've got to take the pharmaceutical approach and just drill to kill," he said. "And if you can't kill it, there's an orebody there. "We've got 18 to 20 identified prospects to make our way through. "The early results have been encouraging but I'd like to think we're going to be reasonably mercenary about how we go about this exploration drilling. "We're not worried about trying to keep ourselves gainfully employed for the next five years. We just want to get on with it and we've got the money in the bank to do that." The understated upside for Ballard is how simple its permitting will be, in a world where that aspect of mine building is getting more arduous and costly by the day. Its assets sit on granted mining leases with no native title concerns. And BM1 has already submitted a works approval application to approve a 1.5Mtpa carbon in leach processing plant and tailings facility ahead of mining and environmental studies. "That's been a sort of six to eight month process. We're nearly there. If we want to go back to DWER (WA's Department of Water and Environmental Regulation) and amend that, maybe that's a three or four month exercise. So we're quietly derisking the project in the background." With Baldock's advanced nature, the geology is also at a far more progressed state than you'd expect from an $82m capped explorer. "We see Baldock providing the first five or six years of the mine life. And then what we're trying to achieve with the exploration drilling is you start to get visibility over the production years six to 10," Brennan said. "That's the benchmark for building an operation of standalone scale."
News.com.au
44 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Who is the next multi-bagger on Mark Creasy's roster?
At 80, Mark Creasy remains one of the most prominent resources investors on the ASX And he still has sway – the uber prospector's largesse has helped Peregrine Gold and FMR Resources to big 2025 gains The latest on Creasy's ASX (and LSE) portfolio It's 2025, and even at the age of 80 few investors have the sway of WA's prospector extraordinaire Mark Creasy. Look no further than FMR Resources (ASX:FMR), which has seen its shares more than double since announcing a deal to earn up to a 60% interest in a host of tenements at the Llahuin copper and gold project in Chile. Partnering up with Southern Hemisphere Mining, the announcement on June 13 was accompanied by a $2.2 million capital raising at 16c. It brought Creasy on board as a major shareholder, his 2.05m share stake comprising 5.01% of the register. There was more to it. Oliver Kiddie, a Creasy loyalist who previously worked directly for Creasy Group, and led one of Mark Creasy's long-standing ASX investments Legend Mining (ASX:LEG) as managing director, also flew through the door as MD. It shows Creasy had more skin in this game than his 5% stake in the $16m minnow would suggest. He can be a self-fulfilling prophecy as well. While the long-term outcomes for FMR will depend on drilling success at the Southern Porphyry JV, the aftermath of his investment has seen the microcap run 150% beyond the placement price to 40c. That's influence. It's got us wondering, where else is the notoriously private British-born billionaire looking for value in 2025? Under the radar Your average punter would be familiar with many of Creasy's success stories and the mythology surrounding one of the ASX's most successful and calculated gamblers. A mining engineer by training who first got into the outback life as an opal hunter, his decision to peg vast swathes of golden turf in WA's remote Yandal province paid dividends when he made a motza selling the Jundee and Bronzewing discoveries to Diamond Joe Gutnick's Great Central Mines. In Sirius Resources' 2012 Nova nickel discovery, on WA's even less traversed Fraser Range, the main man further burnished his rich reputation. Having reputedly claimed the ground while chasing wreckage from the Skylab crash near Esperance in 1979, companies backed by Creasy would go on to be the first and best movers in the WA nickel province. A role in the 2023 Andover lithium discovery cemented his status as one of WA's top mine-finders, a rare third tier-1 deposit after Jundee and Nova. But Creasy's scrip is spread liberally across ASX and international explorers and there are plenty of under the radar stocks where the 'uber prospector's' magic touch could still yield a major find. Among the most successful this year is Peregrine Gold (ASX:PGD), which is sitting on a 104% six month gain as of Monday, and has seen Creasy lift his stake from ~12% to over 17% since the start of the year after bankrolling most of an entitlement offer closed in February. The partnership between Creasy and Peregrine has grown since, with Creasy striking a deal with Peregrine to tap gold material down to 50m vertical depth on three special prospecting licences over the Peninsula prospect at PGD's Newman gold project. It should see a flow of cash to fund exploration, with Peregrine to nab 60% of the net proceeds of any gold extracted by Creasy and his team. Iron giant While the Newman project has delivered bedrock gold discoveries at Tin Can and Tin Can West in 2023, this year's gain has been down to two emerging channel iron deposit finds. Both the Coopers CID North prospect and the Peninsula CID prospect, some 2.5km to the west, sit in world-class areas, 10km from BHP's Western Ridge deposit and 21km from its famous Mt Whaleback mine. Mt Whaleback is the largest open pit iron ore mine in the world, having grown to 1.5km wide and 5km long since its opening in the late 1960s, the development on which the inland Pilbara town of Newman was founded. An 85:15 JV between BHP and the Japanese partnership of Mitsui and ITOCHU, any nearby discovery of scale would be a logical acquisition target for the Big Australian. And those sorts of deals have proven popular this year as the Pilbara majors have reinforced their cash cow iron ore divisions. Andrew Forrest's Fortescue (ASX:FMG) acquired Red Hawk Mining in a $254 million takeover to pick up the Blacksmith project near its Solomon Hub, and a consortium led by Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) is on track to buy the Robe Mesa project near its Robe River JV for $75m from majority Creasy owned CZR Resources (ASX:CZR). The 6.4km long Coopers is just 2km from Western Ridge with average grades from shallow samples of 57% Fe and as high as 61% Fe. Historical samples from Peninsula have graded between 56.9% and 60.2% Fe. It would be a great time to find a new source of the cheap and easy to dig CID style iron ore in the region. BHP is bringing Western Ridge online from FY2027 as a 25Mtpa replacement mine to counteract depletion at the ageing Newman hub. Profit raking While he's always had spectacular paper wealth, Creasy's investments in the resources space have become increasingly lucrative for the octogenarian prospector in cold hard cash. Creasy Group pulled out a $48.6m profit in FY2023, more than doubling to $106.8m in FY2024. The critical feature there was the $1.7bn sale of Azure Minerals to SQM and Hancock Prospecting. It was a two headed monster for Creasy. He made bank off the sale of his ~12% stake in Azure to the well-heeled partners. But he also retained 40% of the Andover lithium project – now one of the world's largest hard rock deposits. The SQM-Hancock deal handily placed a valuation on his stake in the Pilbara find. Another key contributor in the past financial year – results still to be reported – will be his control of the Warrawoona gold mine near Marble Bar, picked up off the collapsed Calidus Resources in 2024 and now run through the AIM Mining Corporation vehicle. Saddled by out of the money hedges and high costs when it was operating as a listed entity, Creasy's decision to acquire first the Macquarie debt and then to mop up the operations in a DOCA could not have been better timed to capitalise on gold's run beyond $5000/oz Aussie. The $75m sale of the Robe Mesa project to the Rio Tinto led Robe River JV by CZR is also likely to end with a distribution to shareholders – the billionaire prospector chief among them. Paper trail On the paper side there have been some hitches. IGO (ASX:IGO), Creasy's largest single ASX shareholding by value thanks to its 2015 purchase of Creasy-backed Sirius Resources and Nova, is up around 10% YoY. But at $5.44 on Monday, the lithium producer's shares are well down on their highs, having commanded $16.57 at their peak in 2023 following the EV boom. Galileo Mining is down 3% in the past year, but at 16c is well down on the $1.78 record it hit in 2022 as a PGE discovery near Norseman had punters frothing. Zuleika Gold (ASX:ZAG), in which Creasy holds a 42% share, is up around 100% YTD after a spike in June when it announced progress in some court hearings related to historical matters against Catalyst Metals. But it's small fry by Creasy's standards, with a market cap of just $16.5m. While the value of Creasy's ASX holdings are lower than they were a couple years ago, they've been supplemented by the float of Lexington Gold in London, which holds a large resource in South Africa's Witwatersrand Basin in a partnership with Harmony Gold. To check out all the investments identified through substantial shareholder notices and Top 20 reports on the IRESS platform, check the table below. CODE COMPANY SHARES % PRICE VALUE ZAG Zuleika Gold Ltd 313034895 42% 0.022 $ 6,886,767.69 CZR CZR Resources Ltd 123529413 52% 0.24 $ 29,647,059.12 IGO IGO Limited 67103153 9% 5.41 $ 363,028,057.73 HLX Helix Resources 51437609 2% 0.002 $ 102,875.22 S2R S2 Resources 42482707 8% 0.083 $ 3,526,064.68 PGD Peregrine Gold 14435553 17% 0.28 $ 4,041,954.84 GAL Galileo Mining Ltd 13042899 7% 0.16 $ 2,086,863.84 HRZ Horizon 12906000 0% 0.048 $ 619,488.00 ICL Iceni Gold 11500000 3% 0.07 $ 805,000.00 RTR Rumble Res Limited 10000000 1% 0.031 $ 310,000.00 APC APC Minerals 9394232 8% 0.007 $ 65,759.62 TAM Tanami Gold NL 8250001 1% 0.056 $ 462,000.06 PGM Platina Resources 7000000 1% 0.021 $ 147,000.00 TLG Talga Group Ltd 5500000 1% 0.54 $ 2,970,000.00 LSX Lion Selection Grp 4448976 0% 0.8 $ 3,559,180.80 ZNC Zenith Minerals Ltd 3588417 1% 0.06 $ 215,305.02 RHI Red Hill Minerals 2200000 3% 3.36 $ 7,392,000.00 JLL Jindalee Lithium Ltd 1000000 1% 0.42 $ 420,000.00 EME Energy Metals Ltd 511718 0% 0.075 $ 38,378.85 FMR FMR Resources 2050000 5% 0.4 $ 820,000.00 LEX* LEXINGTON GOLD 53254768 12% 3.5 £ 186,391,688.00 TOTAL $ 814,991,307.69
