Billionaire Paul Little pitches $8m South Yarra site near Melbourne High

November 6, 2026 — 5:00am

Capital Gain

Billionaire Paul Little is having another stab at selling a development site overlooking prestigious Melbourne High School’s hockey pitch.

The pitch is not a ground Little is likely to have played sport on. The rich-lister and property developer went to Ashwood High in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, but many of his business peers attended the top-tier school, including other property players Lindsay Fox and John Gandel.

The high school, meanwhile, is getting a $10 million cash injection to help refurbish its crumbling “castle on the hill”.

Little’s cleared 493-square-metre site at 38-40 Claremont Street once had an office-warehouse and was bought for $2.6 million in 2007 from liquidators.

At the time, the Forrest Hill precinct surrounding the school was still in the early days of its transformation from light industrial to high-rise apartment towers. All that remains is a remnant strip of low-rise buildings on Claremont Street

A plan to build a 19-storey apartment tower on Little’s site was knocked back in 2012, partly because it came without car parking. In 2022, the site had a hotel permit. Now it has plans for student accommodation.

Allard Shelton agents Joseph Walton and Ben Tremellen have the listing and are expecting about $8 million.

Records show its neighbour at 24-26 Claremont Street finally sold last year to the Pellicano Group’s build-to-rent arm Pellicano Living for $7 million, through Gross Waddell ICR agents Andrew Greenway and Michael Gross.

At the end of the street, construction has started on Wattletree’s 16-storey South Yarra House, Only seven of 53 apartments remain for sale.

Booze barn

Listed booze behemoth Endeavour is offloading the long-held Bulleen pub that once boasted the longest bar in the southern hemisphere.

The sprawling suburban beer barn, once called The Sentimental Bloke (but now known more prosaically as the Manningham Hotel), is for sale with vacant possession. It is expected to fetch about $20 million.

That’s mostly for the huge 2.79-hectare site, nestled next door to the sport playing fields of Marcellin and Trinity schools but currently overlooking the mammoth North East Link building site.

The pub is one of a core group of hotels owned by former pub boss Bruce Mathieson’s Bruandwo, the company that was poured into ALH in the early 2000s and then into the Endeavour Group.

During the 1980s, a raft of classic Aussie rock bands on their long way to the top once played at the 6100-square-metre hotel, including Cold Chisel, INXS and Midnight Oil.

It’s in a residential growth zone right where the new ring road extension meets the Eastern Freeway in a tunnel under the Yarra River and the Bulleen billabongs.

So access is a bit tricky at the moment, and gaming revenue is down. Its 100 machines returned $2.6 million a year, compared with $3.03 million in 2024-25.

Knight Frank agents Tom Ryan, Paul Lillis and Nick Bisset are running an expression-of-interest campaign under instruction from Charter Keck Cramer. It’s pitched more as a development site than a hospitality opportunity.

Endeavour has flagged plans to revamp any pubs that need a fresh face. But it looks like The Bloke – named for the C.J. Dennis poem about a larrikin who chooses love over the fighting life – is not getting the makeover.

Also on the market is one of the first big gastro pubs from the 1990s: O’Connell’s Hotel at 193-195 Montague Street, South Melbourne.

Records show O’Connell’s freehold was bought by the Kurtulus family in 2012 for $3.5 million. The new price tag on the pub, which recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, is more than $8 million. HTL’s George Iliopulos and Scott Callow have the listing.

Good food

Hot on the heels of Peter Mitrakis’ sale of the Woolworths Metro in Albert Park, comes its neighbour, the old post office, which houses grocer Gum Tree Good Food.

The 348-square-metre strata space at 87-89 Dundas Place goes to auction next month and is expected to fetch more than $5 million.

Gum Tree Good Food, which has four outlets in the southern suburbs, has occupied the building, next door to the Albert Park Hotel, since 2012.

Records show the owners of the business sold it in 2024 for $4.9 million. Gum Tree pays $327,818 a year in rent and has a new seven-year lease with two seven-year options.

Fitzroys’ Chris James and Tom Fisher are running the December 4 auction.

Two doors down, the former bank branch at 95-97 is understood to have sold last month for about $7.2 million.

The art deco building, leased to Woolworths, sold through MAKER Property’s Anthony Kirwan, George Davies and Raphael Favas, and Lemon Baxter’s Peter Sprekos and Tom Burley.

While the buyer and price were undisclosed, the yield on the deal was under 4.3 per cent.

It attracted six bids from high-net-worth individuals and families and sold to a local investor. Mitrakis, a prominent investor-lawyer-architect, bought it from CBA in 1990 for $985,000.

The next result coming out of the village will be the three-storey headquarters of record company Mushroom, around the corner at 9 Dundas Lane.

Mushroom is moving into the CBD after 46 years in the 1089-square-metre warehouse. It’s on a 525-square-metre parcel of land behind the village shops.

Stonebridge agents Dylan Kilner, Max Warren and Chao Zhang ran the expressions of interest campaign and are in negotiations. It’s expected to fetch well over its $6.8 million quote.

Dining out

A new generation of fast food outlets is attracting investors, with a Guzman y Gomez outlet selling for $6.6 million while it is under construction.

The restaurant at 1 Hirata Boulevard, Wyndham Vale, is expected to be finished in December.

It has a 20-year lease to GyG, which will pay $352,000 a year for the 2350-square-metre site.

Stonebridge Property Group agents Rorey James and Kevin Tong handled the off-market transaction for the developer, who wanted to free up some cash for his next project.

Meanwhile, an old restaurant site in Highett is set for a new life as a self-storage facility after the sale of the old Domenic’s Restaurant at 1117-1119 Nepean Highway.

Records show Keepers, a new entrant in the sector, paid $6.2 million for the 3648-square-metre landholding, which is leased to seafood restaurant Kickin’ Inn until July 2028.

MAKER Property’s Anthony Kirwan, Raphael Favas and George Davies handled the off-market transaction, which settled in 70 days.

It’s not the only suburban restaurant to change hands. In Doncaster, the former Barbarino’s at 546 Doncaster Road sold to the Hometown Asian Supermarket chain.

The building, on a 4081-square-metre site near Westfield Doncaster has been occupied by the Plume Chinese restaurant for 20 years.

JLL’s Romanor Falconer, Tom Noonan, MingXuan Li and Dominic McGrath got the deal done but could not reveal the price. However, it was expected to fetch about $10 million.

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